Episode 1661: Delight in the Law

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Scott Maderer: [00:00:00] Thanks for joining me on episode 1,661 of the Inspired Stewardship Podcast

Sam Bennett: I'm Sam Bennett. I challenge you to invest in yourself, invest in others, develop your influence, and impact the world by using your time, your talent, and your treasures to live out your calling. Having the ability to get things done is key, and one way to be inspired to do that is to listen to this, the Inspired Stewardship Podcast with my friend, Scott Maderer.

Scott Maderer: And it's hard. But guess what? Living the other way is hard, too. Living in community with Christ within us is incredibly hard. But living in community without Christ is impossible. [00:01:00]

Welcome and thank you for joining us on the Inspired Stewardship Podcast. If you

truly desire to become the person who God wants you to be, then you must learn to use your time, your talent, and your treasures for your true calling.

In the Inspired Stewardship Podcast, you will learn to invest in yourself, invest in others, and develop your influence so that you can impact the world.

In today's Spiritual Foundation episode, I talk about Romans 7:15-25. I talk about how we all get it wrong and how that's part of the human condition, and I also talk about how the cure isn't really a cure, but rather living in Christ. Romans 7:15-25 says, "I do [00:02:00] not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but the very thing I hate.

Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that the good does not dwell within me, that is, in my flesh, for the desire to do the good lies close at hand, but not the ability. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but the sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members."

Wretched person that I am, who will rescue me from this [00:03:00] body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. This is part of the liturgy that fell this weekend, and maybe as a church, if you're in the U.S., your church recognized the July 4th weekend, and in fact, this was the 250th celebration of the United States as a nation.

And I don't know, maybe your church recognizes that sort of thing. Maybe it doesn't. Maybe you recognized it and held up all of the wonderful history and ideals that our nation was founded on. Maybe people were reflecting on things that seem like they've gone by the wayside in modern times. Maybe it was a little bit of both.

Maybe we were celebrating and giving thanks and proud, but also concerned and worried about where we're going. How can we have joy even when we have reservations? [00:04:00] I mean, surely that's possible, right? Paul, Barnabas, they were singing in prison. It's clear that we are called to be joyful and grateful even when we're afraid, even when things are not going well.

We're called to do that in our personal lives, but I would argue we're also called to do that in our national and community lives. We should always be on the road to perfection and yet also constantly at war with ourselves. Maybe that war language was a little bit surprising. After all, wars seem to start when we're down or angry or attacked or hurting and they do.

They do come from our low points. There's no question about that, but there's more to it than just having a, a bad day. That's what this passage from Romans is talking about. Paul is saying, "No, it's something more fundamental than [00:05:00] just I screwed up," or, "I had a bad day today." There's something much more real, much more human than that.

Paul seems to always manage to come forward and manage to spoil the celebration. Paul here seems to be having a bad day to end all bad days, maybe a bad life. "Wretched man that I am, nothing good dwells within me." Yeah. I don't know about you, but I've been there. I've had moments where it feels like every choice I made, every choice I had left to make was nothing but a bad one.

Every mistake I've made was a big one. All my thoughts were broken and dark. Those moments of being in the dark night of the soul, I've had them I've been right there where Paul is talking from, and probably you have too. [00:06:00] And we tend to tell each other, "Just hold on. Hang in there. It'll get better soon.

Just hang on until the storm passes." But Paul in this passage is saying, "No, no, no, no, no, no, no. You aren't listening. This isn't just a momentary weakness in your will that is unable to be overcome. This isn't just I didn't get enough sleep last night, or my biorhythms are out of whack, or the Venus is rising, the moon isn't in the right phase.

It's not that. This is who you are. This is who I am. This is the real consequences of being a human living in the world as it is now, rather than the kingdom that God designed for us. This is what happens when sin is loose in the world." And remember, sin here just means missing the mark. It means [00:07:00] not doing what we know we should be doing.

And this is the universal human condition. It's individual, but it's, it's also corporate. It's national. It's worldwide. Maybe you heard that and said, "Yeah, yeah, I get it. I do bad stuff from time to time. I mess up. I make a goof, a mistake. I have an open mouth, insert foot moment. But I'll do better. I really will.

I'll pull myself up. I'll, I'll work harder. I'll do it, and I'll get it right. I can do it." But Paul is reminding us that this isn't about willpower. This isn't an exercise program. This isn't about trying harder. This isn't about you at all. This is about you admitting that you can't do it on your own.[00:08:00]

There's not enough good in you to do it on your own. There's nothing good in you at all.

But that's sort of that scare message of faith, shaming people into joining. Nowadays, right, we have goal setting and strategic plans and self-esteem and all of these things, self-help books and all of it. But what Paul says is, "Yeah, and that's all good stuff. There's nothing wrong with it, but what you need isn't that.

What you need is Christ. What you need is a savior. You need rescuing, and you can't rescue yourself." I can't rescue myself And when you hear that, you recognize it. That's true. And yet that's hard for us to [00:09:00] live into every day. It's easy to accept that you need rescuing from time to time, but no. You don't step away and go, "Ah, I got it now, Jesus.

Thanks anyway." You lean into it. You recognize that you need that each and every day, each and every moment. The war within us means we cannot consistently choose the good. We can't will ourselves into the right. We can't earn our way. Sin is not an act or a pattern of behaviors. Instead, it's within us. It dwells within us.

That's what Paul is saying, and as long as it's there, we can win for a time, but we'll slip out of it. It'll break out every once in a while, f- like that infection that just keeps coming back. [00:10:00] But the cure, the cure isn't to look for a cure. The cure is to recognize that deep down, that is what we're called to do, is embrace God, to follow God, to live into the grace of God, to recognize that you don't deserve it, but God has already rescued you.

You don't deserve it, but God has already forgiven you, and that, that thing that lives inside you, that drives you away, can be replaced with something different, with Christ. And usually that's a process. It takes time. It happens over a lifetime. It happens over and over again. There's a struggle. It could happen in a moment, but usually for most of us it doesn't.

And it's hard. But [00:11:00] guess what? Living the other way is hard, too. Living in community with Christ within us is incredibly hard. But living in community without Christ is impossible. Thanks for listening.

Thanks so much for listening to the Inspired Stewardship podcast. As a subscriber and listener, we challenge you to not just sit back and passively listen, but act on what you've heard and find a way to live your calling. If you enjoyed this episode please do us a favor. Go over to inspiredstewardship.com/itunesrate, all one word.

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