I Fought the Law, and The Law Won

Trinity Presbyterian Church of Bethesda
07.06.08; Rev. David Williams

Scripture Reading: Romans 7: 15-25

What is sin? People seem to have so many different ways of interpreting it.

Among some folks who don’t believe in God at all, there’s the attitude that nothing is sin. Sin is an outmoded concept, a meaningless and judgmental nothing word. People who argue this tend to deeply embrace a shallowly postmodern attitude. That means that they believe that everything is relative, and things are only what you say them to be. If you believe that eating really, really good high quality dark chocolate is a sin...and Lord knows it feels that way...that’s your opinion. But it’s only an opinion, nothing more and nothing less. Nothing is truly “bad.” Nothing is truly “good.” These people tend not to be very happy, because for some reason, their lives become a shambles.

For those who embrace the crazy idea that some things are good and some things are bad, and who believe that in some way God is involved, sin can have a couple of different meanings.

There’s the attitude, held by some folks, that sin has only to do with injustice and oppression. It’s all the fault of society or cultural bigotries or poverty. We’re all depraved on account of we’re deprived. If someone does something wrong, it isn’t their fault in any way. It must be because their self-esteem was somehow harmed as a child, or they came out of a dysfunctional family, or they got a B minus instead of the A they knew they deserved on that paper. No one is ever responsible for anything. It’s all society’s fault...and God loves you no matter what.

There’s the attitude, held by other folks, that sin is all about how you personally have failed to stick to the Rules with a capital R. These people tend to have long lists of things that God hates. If you do any of those things, you sin. That includes eating the chocolate I mentioned before, watching any movie that isn’t rated G and produced by and for Christians, listening to any of that newfangled “rock’n roll” music. If you’re a woman, that might include owning any shoes that might not be described as “sensible,” if you’re a man, even thinking for a moment about Scarlett Johannsen. Oops. Sorry.

But as the Apostle Paul approaches it in the text today from his letter to the church at Rome, sin is something very different. It’s not nothing. It’s not all about social injustice. It’s also not about violating one of a list of rules. Sin is somehow woven up into who we are. It’s a law unto itself, a state of being that somehow violates the intent that God has for your life.

Paul brings it up in the letter to the church at Rome for several reasons. This letter is, after all, his great theological explanation of the law, our nature, and the necessity of faith for our salvation. In the seventh chapter of this book, the apostle gets into a long comparison of the law and sin. The law itself is the knowledge of what God desires, of what is necessary for us to live in harmony with God and with one another. Paul says this is a good thing, but that somehow we as human beings are radically set against the law. Though we know the goodness of what God asks of us, we find that we resist it. We know we shouldn’t covet, and yet for some reason we just can’t stop leafing through those catalogues. We know we should treat others with respect and openness, but when it comes right down to it, we just can’t seem to find it in ourselves to forgive.

Those struggles are ongoing, constant and seemingly futile. Fulfilling the demands of even the most basic of God’s laws seems utterly beyond us. We just can’t seem to accomplish it ourselves. When Paul describes his own struggles with sin, he describes it as not a list of things or a social thing, but somehow as a power, a basic flaw in all of us.

For those who don’t like Paul...and there are many modern Christians who’ve decided that somehow Paul represents everything that ‘s wrong with Christianity...what should be most striking about this little passage is just how Paul expresses this perspective on sin. He doesn’t describe sin in terms of the evil that all those narsty unbelievers commit. He doesn’t go into a long rant against those who somehow don’t meet his standards. He describes sin in himself, from his own deep personal sense of it. Unlike the hypocrites who are quick to judge everyone for being judgmental, Paul articulates sin in a way that shows first and foremost, he holds himself accountable.

Paul, who has a powerful sense of the presence of God’s Spirit and the central reality of God’s love, views sin as that thing that tears us apart, that brings death and sorrow and brokenness to our lives. It is the dark shadow that stands in opposition to the goodness that God intends for all of us. That goodness is spoken in Torah, the law of God, but sin defies it. What sin is defying is that law that heals the rifts between us and other human creatures. Sin is what shatters the relationships between us and God and between us and neighbor. Paul describes it as “of the flesh,” which doesn’t mean everything about our bodies is bad. Instead, “of the flesh” means oriented towards ourselves. At it’s heart, at it’s core, sin is selfishness, self-orientation, self-absorption, and self-serving.

If that’s what the Apostle teaches about sin, the logical next question is...how do we get around it? How can we manage to overcome sin?

From Paul’s teaching, overcoming sin is not just a matter of obeying the laws of God. It’s not like checking a box, or making sure you don’t drive more than 85 on the Beltway. That is the speed limit, isn’t it?

Well...um..I think it’s different for motorcycles.

The Apostle himself answers the question about overcoming sin in the next chapter, where he says sin can be overcome only:

“..if the Spirit of God lives in you. And if anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ, he does not belong to Christ. But if Christ is in you, your body is dead because of sin, yet your spirit is alive because of righteousness. And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit, who lives in you.”

Overcoming sin is about turning away from yourself. It’s about allowing yourself to be...through faith...inwardly transformed by the Spirit of Christ. It is through seeking that, through seeking a way to break free of our desire to serve only ourselves, that we both come to understand the nature of sin and how to overcome it. We are not, as much as we’d like to claim it, a law in and of ourselves. In God’s creation, there is only the one law...the law that defines all things..and though we might struggle against it, it is ultimately not something we can overcome without destroying ourselves, those around us, and creation itself.