Sometimes you look at your life and feel downright un-Christian. You find yourself neglecting to do the good things you should do. And you commit the very sins you hate and know you shouldn’t do. The conflict inside is real, and it weighs you down more than you care to admit. Is the struggle with sin part of a healthy Christian’s life? If sin is to be expected, why? Will I ever have victory over the sins I battle today? In Why Do I Still Sin?, John MacArthur looks to Romans 7 to provide encouraging, biblical insight into the issue of the Christian and indwelling sin.
Romans 07:14 .. for we know that the Law is spiritual .. but I am of flesh .. sold into bondage to sin 07:15 .. for what I am doing .. I do not understand .. for I am not practicing what I would like to do .. but I am doing the very thing I hate 07:16 .. but if I do the very thing I do not want to do .. I agree with the Law .. confessing that the Law is good 07:17 .. so now .. no longer am I the one doing it .. but sin which dwells in me 07:18 .. for I know that nothing good dwells in me .. that is .. in my flesh .. for the willing is present in me .. but the doing of the good is not 07:19 .. for the good that I want .. I do not do .. but I practice the very evil that I do not want 07:20 .. but if I am doing the very thing I do not want .. I am no longer the one doing it .. but sin which dwells in me 07:21 .. I find then the principle that evil is present in me .. the one who wants to do good 07:22 .. for I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man 07:23 .. but I see a different law in the members of my body .. waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of ......... the law of sin which is in my members 07:24 .. wretched man that I am . . . who will set me free from the body of this death 07:25 .. thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord .. so then .. on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God .. ......... but on the other .. with my flesh the law of sin
The function of the law is to detect and condemn sin .. not to deliver from it .. In the life of the believer there will ever be conflict between grace and corruption in the heart .. between the law of God and the law of sin .. who shall deliver us .. Jesus Christ is the all-sufficient Saviour and Friend .. who has not only purchased our deliverance .. but is our advocate in Heaven .. through whom we may be made victorious . . . . the believer upon acceptance of Christ receives a spiritual nature which begins at once strife with the adamic nature .. which is not eradicated until we stand in Christ’s presence . . . the strife is effectually taken up on the believer’s behalf by the Holy Spirit .. and if the believer will but yield to him in the hour of conflict .. he will take the victory (Romans 8:2 .. Gal 5:16-17)