the stars which thy hast established, what is a human being that thou art mindful of him; or the son of humanity that thou shouldst care for him?” A Human Being, master of his environment, looks small enough when viewed in the context of the universe—even as the universe was understood in antiquity. But the important thing is to see him in the context of God, who established the moon and the stars. “O Lord our Lord, how majestic is thy name in all the earth.” We may fly to the moon and the stars; but God will always out pace our knowledge.
We don’t like it. I have already repeated, and begun to demythologize the old story. Adam snatches at the snake’s temptation; “take, eat, and you will be like God.” How splendid—he eats and that is the end of Paradise. For as the Prince of Tyre had to learn, “thou art human, and not God.” But we are not yet at the end of the story. For how does this majestic God behave? We have begun to glimpse this too. The one absolute ruler by right of all the environment of the universe chose to become and live his life as a servant; it was in the humiliation of death that he received the name that is above every name, with all of creation crying—Lord! So when we meet him, we find him in the shame and agony of Calvary. If we are to live with him, we must also die with him. So Paul continues.
“So what shall we say? Shall we go on in sin that grace may abound? God forbid; we who died to sin, how shall we live in it?” In Christ crucified and risen, humanity begins again, and the old pursuit of knowledge and power is disciplined by divine love.
•
“ROMANS 7”—Romans 7.25
[Preached once at St. John’s College Durham 11/21/00]
We have before us in this service Romans 7, perhaps the most difficult, most profound, and most important chapter in the most important and most profound of Paul’s epistles. I am not under the illusion that we shall get very far with it in twenty minutes, but I invite your concentrated attention and your ability to fill in the gaps by calling to mind all those parts of the chapter to which I shall not be able to refer specifically. I thought for a time it might be best to go through the chapter from beginning to end, but I decided not to do that; partly because if I did I should have about a minute a verse, and be unable to do anything worthwhile about any of them, but even more because this is a service, and this part of it is a sermon, and though an exegetical lecture and an exegetical sermon have a good deal in common they are not identical.
The chapter itself pushes me in this direction, for though Paul has a clear theological argument, it is one that cannot be separate from human experience, his own, and his readers! The chapter itself is an address from a dying human being to dying human beings, and our treatment of it better be that too. We have a clear, a very clear theological theme. He begins with an unavoidable but terrible question—Is the Law sin? How could a Jew even form those words? But the answer is plain—No, the Law is certainly not sin, quite the opposite. But sin—personified—has got hold of it and is using this great and good thing for human destruction. The question is answered. It is as if we—never mind who—we had discovered the marvelous power of atomic energy, in itself a splendid thing. But our enemy’s spies have found the secret and are using the power that should have been our defense for our destruction. The Law is good, but Sin has seized it, and is using the power that should have given life as an instrument of death.
The theological question is answered, but it cannot be answered like a question in an exam paper in dogmatics; it can only be answered by digging deep into the stuff of human life and experience and this is precisely what a sermon will do. It will have a theological content but it too will be an address from a dying person to dying people.
For a sermon we need a text—Where shall we find it? How shall I choose it? I must admit that my choice involves a fair measure of original sin, you see I myself am supplying an illustration for my sermon. There is a desire here, not only under the surface to provoke, to disturb. I am taking as text the half-verse that many people say Paul did not write, could not have written. Others will say, yes perhaps he wrote it, but not at this point in the chapter; someone has been shuffling the cards. This is it—“So then I myself with the mind serve the Law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Rom 7.25). How could he write, “O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me out of the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord”—How could he write that, and then the text of Rom 7.25? But he did whether it suits us or not.
And it is a good text. For one thing it gives me the three clear points which I am old-fashioned enough to like. And for another thing it is true to life, isn’t it? The three points are given by three words and they average only four letters apiece.
LAW
The Law is a good thing. It is spiritual, inspired by God’s Spirit. It is holy, righteous and good. It encourages the right things, the things you ought to do. It is not contrary to the promises of God, far from it, it speaks them. All that God looks for in human behavior can be summed up in one of its precepts—“thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” So what is wrong with it? Nothing really, and so Paul says. I have quoted his words already. Yet there is something wrong, and there are more words of his to quote. He begins at once to dig into human experience. His own is it? Or is he generalizing? It doesn’t matter. Perhaps generalizing is the right word.
To be without the Law is to be free, to be alive. To do exactly what you please, uninhibited and unrestrained. This is life. To spend 2 million pounds a month on flowers and other fancies (like a notable figure in the paper last week—Sir John Ethan). Even if your fancies and your funds don’t go so far, to be free is fine. But the Law steps in with its ugly “Thou shalt not” and freedom is gone. But it may also cut the other way as the Law may say ‘Thou shalt.” And again, freedom is curtailed and I must spend time and energy doing things I don’t really want to do.
Is it really so bad? Does Law trouble us so much? There is no law that prevents us from spending 2 million pounds a month. Any society must have rules. A state must, a town must, a college must. Some of them we don’t like, some of them we ignore, but we don’t need to get tragic about it. But we are not talking about the law of the state, or even the rules of the Church. We are talking about the Law of God. For Law, the Law God made for his people, is religion. We are talking about religion. “Religion,” said Barth long ago, “divides people in two halves.” You may snap your fingers at the lawmakers at Westminster, but as Paul says in another letter, God is not mocked. You can’t get away with it there.5
Law is right there in the text; twice over so you don’t miss it. Two laws then? It may look like that but I think it is really one law, appearing under different managements. And the thing itself, before you get to the managements you can find in concrete terms. It is written there in the Old Testament. The Old Testament Law, as we know, was expanded and interpreted, but I think we can afford to neglect the expansions and interpretations this evening.
This Law came from God, it was God’s good gift, a gift of love, to his human beings, or to an especially favored family of humanity, who, when the time was ripe, would convey God’s benefits to the rest of the human race. This Law, says Paul, was spiritual, because it came from God’s Spirit. Its commands were holy, righteous, and good. Every society needs rules for the protection of its members. And they are needed to give the society an object, a purpose, something to aim at. This too was clear. The purpose was life in obedience to God, in fellowship with God, in enjoyment of his love.
This was God’s law—“this do and you shall live.” But sin found its opportunity in the law and used it to kill me. It does it in two ways (I hope this does not grow too complicated). There is the direct attack. In terms of the old story which we all know, if the Lord says, “don’t, for your own good, eat the apple on this tree” then I will eat it. That will show God what a free independent fellow I am. I will construct idols, I will take my neighbor’s life, or his goods, or his wife. That leads to the way out of the Garden.
But sin has a more subtle method. It says, “see all these commands; do them all, everyone, leave nothing out. What a wonderful reward you will get!” That is an even better and more certain way of approaching God on equal terms