The Great War

By John Stallings



Did you know…..?

……….the book of Romans doesn’t have any stories about Jesus? The book of Romans doesn’t contain any stories about the apostle Paul like the book of Acts does, & Paul wrote Romans.

The book of Romans has no stories, period! The book of Romans only has ideas, great sweeping theological ideas, & all the ideas are about Christ; the mind, heart & incarnation of Christ.

Many scholars believe the book of Romans to be the greatest work ever written. It was certainly written by the greatest Christian, Paul, on the greatest subject- salvation.

Romans was written by the Apostle Paul in approximately 58 A.D. Hundreds of books have been written about Paul’s letter to the Romans however it reads more like a theological essay than a letter.

It’s not my intention to try to analyze the book for I can’t, any more than babies could analyze their mother’s milk. They drink it for nourishment & life. I come to this letter again & again to drink deeply of it, to digest as much of it as I can & to get to know the Lord more intimately, until His nature is formed in me.

The themes of Romans include, sin & death, sanctification, grace, faith, righteousness, justification, redemption, resurrection, glorification, spiritual gifts & respect for government.

In her book, Joni, Joni Erickson Todd describes coming to grips with her paralysis. At the age of 15 Joni was paralyzed from the neck down as a result of a diving accident. Joni lay unclothed on a hospital cart & she wanted to cover herself, which in the past had been an easy task. But now, try as she may she couldn’t get her arms & legs to respond to her wishes. She knew in her mind what she wanted to do but her body was unresponsive, something most of us can only relate to in small ways.

In Romans Paul describes a much bigger problem & deeper frustration; the agony that our sinful flesh doesn’t want to respond to God’s Law, & that our natural bodies or flesh man, constantly wage war against our Spirit man.

ROMANS CHAPTER 7 IS ONE OF THE MOST MISUNDERSTOOD CHAPTERS IN THE BIBLE.

In this great chapter, Paul tackles the problem of our sinful nature. He says in essence; “I don’t understand my own actions. I do the very thing I hate. The good things I want to do I don’t do but the bad things, the things I hate- I end up doing. I’m a miserable person. Who’s going to rescue me from this awful situation, this life of sin, this body of death?”

Some of our tender spiritual nerves & sensibilities get pinched when we read these words of Paul because he’s talking about the most depressing & hopeless aspects & realities of our lives. Some people even interpret chapter seven to mean to live the Christian life is impossible.

However Paul doesn’t dwell on our weakness in this chapter to bring us down, quite the contrary. He’s preparing us for God’s provision for living righteously which comes in chapter eight.

CHAPTER 7 INTRODUCED A CONUNDRUM

A conundrum is a problem or puzzle, something that’s truly unsolvable. The following is a conundrum;

There was a church in the process of calling a new pastor. They interviewed two candidates; we’ll call them candidates Smith & Jones. The congregation voted to call Pastor Jones but the church secretary mistakenly sent the letter of acceptance to Pastor Smith. Pastor Smith was so happy to leave the church where he Pastored that he immediately resigned & wrote to the new church to tell them he was coming.

Only then did the church realize they had sent the wrong man the letter of call. What to do? Do you tell Pastor Smith that he wasn’t elected & leave him without a church? Or do you take Rev. Smith knowing all the while the congregation’s choice was Pastor Jones? He’s going to find out anyway isn’t he?

It’s a conundrum! There seems to be no answer that will satisfy everyone, no matter how determined a problem-solver you may be. I couldn’t help but smile when I learned what the church did to solve their problem. They took Rev. Smith as their Pastor & fired the church secretary! It figures.

Have you ever snuck into the kitchen in the quiet of the night when everyone was asleep & raided the fridge? Have you ever made yourself a chocolate sundae with nuts, after midnight? What I’ve learned is, especially if you have a sweet-tooth, you just have to quit buying certain things & “fat-proof” your kitchen. Someone has said; “the best way to lose weight is eat all you want of everything you don’t want.”

You & I know exactly what the Apostle Paul is talking about in Romans 7.

Years ago a lady shared a story about her experience with her unsaved husband. She’d been going regularly to Wednesday night prayer meeting & was having no problems with him. One night she went with friends to get a bite to eat after prayer meeting & came home a little late. Her husband asked where she’d been & she flew into a rage, telling him that he knew where she’d been; she’d been to prayer meeting. In her defensiveness she attacked him with the words, “You go fishing or golfing with your friends & come home when you want to.” On further reflection she asked herself “why?” Why did I need to verbally attack the person I deeply love? My lower nature & instincts just took over.”

We all know how true it is. The exact scripts may vary but the stories of our lives are closely similar. “We met the enemy & the enemy is us.”

I read a story some time ago about Victor Hugo, who wrote that famous story Les Miserables, which was a favorite Broadway play for years. He was supposed to write every morning but something would get inside of him & get in the way. He would go for a walk, putter in the garden & around the house; anything but write. Hugo finally solved the problem by telling his servant to take his clothes away every night so he’d be forced to stay in his room in the morning & write.

Again we may laugh but it’s because we all know how true it is of our old nature. It’s the age- old clash between our best intentions & reality.

WE SEEM TO BE A BUNDLE OF CONTRADICTIONS

A Christian is, so to speak, a “split-personality.” We are a living battleground on which good & evil vie for mastery. The inner conflict is disturbing but it doesn’t have to be defeating. Most of us strongly desire to be more spiritual don’t we? We want to have a deeper interior with God. We make resolution after resolution to wake up in the morning & read the Bible & pray. I could describe what happens but it would just be needless pain because we all already know.

I want to organize my life so that I can identify with the poor & hurting in this world. I for years have wanted to so arrange things that I could give a larger percentage of my income away to the needy. But what do I do? Too often, the same thing I’ve done for forty years, & that’s to accumulate more stuff. I know what I should do but do I do it? Truthfully-not often enough. What’s wrong?

I want to eat more simply. But I don’t do it, not for long. I want to get off the “ice cream wagon” but, though I’m watching my sugar a lot closer these days, I seem to have some of the same problems at this stage of my life that I had in my early twenties. I want to be able to sit down to a meal of veggies & have no meat with it. Really! I’d like to love vegetables more than I like meat. I want to get off all starches & off salt & sugar & I want to get up in the morning & do my exercises. But is that what I do? Not nearly often enough.

Lust isn’t always sexual lust. Anything that we hunger for that isn’t what God wants for us is lust. [1 Cor.10:6.] There are lots of feelings I have that I know I shouldn’t have but I have them from time to time anyway. To be frank, in reality we all have them. We all have these inner struggles, you have yours & I have mine.

Paul had the most dramatic conversion of anyone on record & probably was the greatest Christian who ever lived. He wrote these words about not doing what he should do, but doing what he doesn’t want to do at the very high point of his life. He was fifty-five to sixty-five years old. He’d been a Christian for more than thirty years & was certainly a mature Christian. He had a fervent prayer life, saw many miracles take place & even by secular standards left some of the greatest writing every penned.

Here was Paul who’d spoken courageously to governments, kings & rulers; was thrown into prison, beaten & stoned. Here was Paul, at the top of his A game saying, “I don’t get it. I just do not get it. I do the things that I hate. And the very things that I want to do, I don’t do. What’s wrong with me? I’m such a wretched person.”

I read that animal trainers can do some remarkable things with African Zebras in captivity. The problem is, the animal is easily frightened. “Flight to life” is his specialty. The Zebras main defense is to get away. He’s mostly always leaving. This was necessary in the African jungle but to the trainers who would never harm the animal, it’s their biggest headache. You can take the Zebra out of Africa but you can’t take Africa out of the Zebra.

Likewise, you can take people out of sinful situations, but you can’t completely take the propensity for sin out of them. The conflicting natures within us are very real. One can be reborn as a child of God but we can’t completely rid ourselves of our old nature that loves to sin. Paul said it best—“So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin. [Rom.7:25]

The truth is- you & I are in a “Great War.” We’re in a war with our flesh, our will & our old nature. We’re still encased in a fleshly body. We say we’re going to lose 10 pounds but we eat ice-cream sundaes. We say we’re going to get up a little earlier in the morning & pray but our resolutions don’t last. We set out to Fast for a few days but then we start having visions of “Whopper-Burgers with cheese” flying all around our heads.

Here’s the truth; our Old Man died with Christ on the cross but we still carry a dead guy with us as long as we’re in a fleshly body. When we choose to live according to the dictates of the flesh we’re constantly giving “mouth-to-mouth” to our Old Man. But here’s some good news, & it’s contained in chapter eight. If we lean on fleshly weapons we’ll fail, but if we lean on the Holy Spirit a whole new dynamic gets interjected into the picture.

There’s a new reality T.V show called “Moment of Truth” on the Fox Channel. Contestants are asked before the show a series of personal questions & their truthfulness is tested by lie detector. When they appear on the program they can win $500,000 if they answer each question correctly. The questions are so dark & personal they can reveal things that are potentially destructive especially to family members.

Recently a young woman appeared on the program hoping to win money so she had to respond truthfully. She admitted to having slept around with other men & wanted to marry someone else for fame & fortune. This admission devastated & humiliated her husband, a New York City police officer, before 8 million people on Network T.V. She was about to pocket $200,000 dollars when she lied on the next question & lost everything. The next question was if she thought she was a good person & she said “yes” & that lie cost her everything. Her sin resulted in pain, guilt & shame & has threatened to destroy the love her husband had for her.

Though a show like this is personally repugnant to me & I’ve only surfed by it a few times, I don’t think a more perfect illustration could be found of the depth of depravity & sin unregenerate man is in before a holy God. Thanks be unto God for His Holy Spirit who gives us power beyond our fleshly appetites.

CHAPTER SEVEN IS A PRELUDE TO CHAPTER EIGHT

The agony of Romans 7 is a prerequisite for the ecstasy of Romans 8. Romans 8 is one of the finest chapters in the Bible. When we move into this chapter we discover Paul talking about the power of the Holy Spirit. Victory in the Christian life is possible not by our human struggle but by yielding our lives to & allowing the Holy Spirit to take over for us. [Rom.8:13.] The Spirit comes in & gives us strength & helps us gain victory over things like judgmental attitudes, bad tempers, alcoholism, & food & drug addictions. The power of the Holy Spirit helps us get control of those destructive behaviors that are hurting us in so many ways.

In Romans 8, Paul talks about the Holy Spirit coming to strengthen us & help us do right. Listen;

There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh but after the spirit. Roman 8:1

Conversion to Christ doesn’t solve all our problems, indeed it results in some problems we never had before. Before our conversion to Christ we weren’t in opposition with sin. Quite the contrary we were slaves to sin & in opposition with God. Now as Christians our animosity toward God has ended & a new animosity—toward sin—has begun. Paul’s struggle was because of his conversion to Christ on the Damascus Turnpike.

Like Paul, until we hate sin we won’t turn from it & until we reach the end of ourselves we won’t turn to God. We have cause to be concerned when we don’t have the agony over our sin nature as Paul had. We have cause for concern when we don’t have the kind of intensity that Paul had. If we fail to struggle as Paul did in chapter 7 there must be a reason.

Have we taken the sins that blew Paul’s mind & broke his heart & relabeled them so they won’t seem so bad? Those who can identify with Paul here are blessed & the way I see it those who can’t are to be pitied. Some might even feel Paul needed to be put in a remedial class so he could learn not to feel so bad about his sin nature. Could the truth be that it’s not Paul who has the problem but us, because we don’t take sin seriously enough?

Paul has told us that sin is something we can’t fully understand. But we don’t have to understand it to know it’s a dilemma & it’s something God hates. A young homosexual had been saved & one day he was talking to a group of ministers & he said something very important. “Don’t try to understand homosexuality & don’t try to identify with me in terms of my homosexuality. You can’t & shouldn’t understand. Just try to understand homosexuality as sin, due to the flesh.”

I believe this young man was right. Whatever the sin might be the solution is the same. God has provided a righteousness we can’t produce ourselves. It’s the cross of Calvary, God’s Word & the power of the Holy Spirit. We need not look for any other solution.

I always look for very simple illustrations because that’s the way my mind works. I think I’ve found a way, at least in part to describe this thing called the dual nature of man.

Go with me to a high mountain deep in the wilderness where the majestic Eagles make their nests & are often seen sitting on high rocks or gliding gracefully through the air.

We spot a large eagle sitting high on his perch, & we realize as we watch him that, in one way he’s as bound by the law of gravity as we are. If he fell off his perch & made no effort to fly he’d be dead weight & perish on the rocks in the valley below. As we watch the Eagle, he stands up & with a powerful thrust pushes his body out & over the cliff & starts to free-fall. We watch the big bird as gravity takes hold & he drops like a rock.

When it seems like the eagle is being pulled by gravity toward destruction on the rocks below, all of the sudden he shoots out his mighty wings. When the eagle spreads his wings, everything changes.

His trajectory is no longer downward; he’s riding on the wind. What has happened? The eagle has introduced another law that cancels out the law of gravity & that law is the Law of Aerodynamics. The eagle flies around in the canyon & we watch him as he intermittently pulls his wings in & free-falls, then unfolds his wings to call on the law of aerodynamics.

The eagle knows nothing of the law of Aerodynamics & he doesn’t need to know. One day he was timid & afraid but that was before his mother taught him to fly. He understands there’s a downward pull & it would be possible for him to become a rock & go down to his death, but he trusts his wings to save him from that.

Thus it is with the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus. We don’t need to wholly understand the theology of the benefits we have in Christ. All we need to do is commit spiritually just as that eagle does physically & the power over our sinful nature is at our disposal.

Question; -Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Answer: -The very spirit that raised the dead body of Jesus Christ from the grave is the spirit that dwells in you & will give life to our mortal bodies.-Romans 8:11

Every Blessing,

John