Deliverance From the Law of Sin

Evan H. Hopkins sheds valuable light on the seventh chapter of Romans--a chapter that has perplexed many Christians--in the following message delivered at the Keswick Convention. Some well-meaning souls, in misunderstanding the value of the experience Paul describes in this chapter, have inadvertently set a stumbling block before God's people that has resulted in much fruitlessness. The address is taken from Keswick's Authentic Voice by Herbert F. Stevenson:

"For to will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not--ROMANS 7:18.

"There are very many who find great difficulty in the seventh chapter of Romans, not because that chapter does not re-echo their own inner experience, but because they find it impossible to reconcile that experience with a life of victory over sin. A key, therefore, is needed to explain that difficulty. Practically, we know that too often this seventh chapter of Romans has been used as a refuge by those who are leading an inconsistent life; and our spiritual enemy would lead us to use this passage as a warrant for expecting defeat. Is it not true that too often it has been used, shall I say, as an excuse for sinning? At all events, many of God's children have come to this chapter for comfort and encouragement while pursuing a course of failure. Surely this was not the purpose of the apostle in writing the passage. When we come rightly to understand it, we shall find that this precious portion of God's Word is full of encouragement, not to those who regard defeat as inevitable, but to those who believe there is a way of deliverance, and would know the secret of overcoming sin.

"Now, there have been those who, in reading this chapter, have looked at the passage as describing the experience of an unconverted man. It is very important that we should, at the outset, clearly understand the spiritual standpoint of the man who utters these words. If we look at it as the experience of an unconverted man there arises this difficulty: we have to assume that the apostle, after having led us on step by step, in the preceding chapters, to glorious heights of triumph, and fellowship with Christ, suddenly goes back to the most elementary truths. There would then be no natural sequence in the line of progress in these chapters. Nor indeed is this necessary. We shall take the passage as true of the child of God.

"My first point, then, is that the passage is descriptive of the Christian man. The apostle is speaking of himself as a disciple of Jesus Christ. He recognises the excellency of God's law. It is true that a Jew also would be ready to recognise this: but the apostle uses terms here in connection with that law which no mere Jew, as such, could have used. His words are strong and emphatic. He says more than any mere Jew could have said: 'Wherefore the law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good' (v. 12). Again, 'we know that the law is spiritual' (v. 14). He no longer occupies the standpoint of a Jew, because he is not now seeking to be justified by that law. It is by that law that he has been convinced of sin, as we see from the verses which precede our text. It is that law which has pierced him through and through. He has seen the spirituality of that law, and it has dealt a death-blow to all his hopes of salvation by the righteousness of that law. I say that only a man who had been spiritually enlightened could have spoken thus of God's law.

"But again, he finds an inward joy in the requirements of God's law. Look at verse 22, 'For I delight in the law of God after the inward man.' That expression is remarkable. It is a strong one. It implies a sympathetic relationship between his inmost being and God's law. It indicates an inward harmony with God's commandments. Now, the natural man could never have said this, and the sinner, however deeply awakened, could never have used such language; he could not have truthfully said that he rejoiced in the requirements of God's law, after the inward man--and by the inward man, I take it, we must understand that part of his being which had been born from above. The language, therefore, is the language of a Christian man, of a converted man.

"Then, notice again that his desires and intentions are on the side of the law. The law is 'good.' 'To will is present with me'--to will the good, to do the good--'but how to perform that which is good, I find not.' This cannot be asserted of any soul that has been untouched by divine grace. I say that we have here the description of a Christian man. But a Christian man regarded in himself. apart from faith in Christ. 'But how can such a condition be possible?' You say, 'It is utterly inconceivable.'

"Well, let us come to the point by considering what is meant by the expression, 'in Christ.' It is a favourite expression of the apostle Paul. The germ of that expression we have in John 15. What do we understand by our blessed Lord's words when He says in that chapter, 'Without me ye can do nothing'? The standing of every believer is 'in Christ,' without any exception. You are accepted 'in Christ.' God looks at you 'in Christ.' But there is another aspect; there is another 'in Christ,' not simply the 'in Christ' of position or standing, but the 'in Christ' of condition, or fellowship. There is such a thing as not abiding 'in Christ.' There is such a thing a being out of communion--out of Christ in that sense. I believe it is to this condition that our Lord referred when He said, 'Without me'--apart from me, outside of me--'ye can do nothing.'

"And so, in the passage before us, what is it we have in these twelve verses, 14-25? The passage is a parenthesis in the line of argument, and for a moment the apostle is contemplating himself as a converted man, and yet as apart from Christ. His desire is heavenwards; his will is on the right side, but he lacks the adequate power to perform; sin is stronger than the strength of his will, stronger than all his holy tendencies upward, which he has by virtue of his new birth. And if he lacks power, what then? There is failure, fruitless struggle, painful effort, continuous conflict and defeat. 'I see not only the law of my mind, which delights in God's requirement. I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members' (v. 23). 'To will the good is present with me, but the evil is also present, and how to perform that which is good I find not.'

"Now, I believe there are multitudes of Christians who are practically in that condition. But you say, 'Does not the apostle describe here his own present experience?' Not necessarily. 'But he is not using the past tense; he is using the present tense.' Yes, but he is not speaking from the standpoint of a present experience, though I believe he is speaking from the standpoint of a present conviction as to the tendency of the two laws. Therefore he uses the present tense. For instance, when I say, 'Fire burns me,' I do not mean precisely the same thing as when I say, 'The fire is burning me.' In the first case I am simply describing the property of fire; in the second I am giving a description of the present action of fire within the sphere of my consciousness. But still I use the present tense. And so the apostle, as one has said, is giving us here a 'diagram' of the condition of things apart from the divine remedy. As if he said, Look for a moment at what you are as a converted man, as a renewed soul, as a Christian, as a child of God. You have the summing up of the matter in the last verse of the chapter. 'So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.' The 'I myself-life.' They know what pardon is; they know what it is to come back again to Him with their guilt, and get forgiven; but they are living for the 'I myself-life' instead of the 'Christ-life.'

"Now let us turn to God's remedy. In order to be able to apply a remedy you must, like the physician, make a true diagnosis of the disease from which the patient is suffering. Now I find in the fifth, sixth, and seventh chapters of Romans three distinct aspects of sin; and in order that we may see what is God's threefold provision, we must understand the nature of sin in this threefold aspect.

"Look at chapter 5. There we see sin as a load of guilt--sin upon us. Come to chapter 6, and there we see sin as a master--sin over us. Then in chapter 7, sin as a law--within us. As the Lord Jesus Christ is God's remedy, we must see the corresponding aspects of that remedy as meeting these various aspects of sin. We have three little prepositions of deep meaning. The keynote of the fifth chapter is, 'Christ died for the ungodly' (Rom. 5:6); of the sixth chapter, 'I died with Christ' (6:6); and of the seventh and eighth chapters, 'in Christ.' In order that I may know deliverance from sin, as the burden of guilt, I must see that He died for me. That is substitution. Every Christian knows what substitution means, and some of us, who have grasped that thought, fancied we had grasped the whole of the Gospel as if there was nothing more to know.

"But the Spirit of God leads on in the next chapter, to see another aspect of Christ. Not only has Christ died for me, and the guilt been taken away, but I have to see that I died with Christ--and with expresses identification. When we grasp the truth contained in that thought, we understand what it is to be delivered from sin as a master. And when we have got as far as that, we fancy, some of us, that we have got it all. No. We are still troubled and cast down, because we have not been brought to see the secret of deliverance from sin as a law in us. But now we are brought to understand God's remedy in the meaning of that little word 'in.' To be 'in Christ' is not only union, but fellowship.

"You have noticed, have you not, that in those eleven verses to which I have referred as a parenthesis, more than thirty times does the apostle allude to himself in one form or another. Not once does he refer to God the Father, the Son, or the Holy Spirit. The reason is that he is regarding himself as a Christian apart for the moment from the remedy; and he says that in spite of all our good intentions and earnestness, and our will being on the right side, the law of sin is too strong for us.

"I have illustrated the point sometimes in this way. Suppose that I take a rod and attach to it a piece of lead. I drop it into a tank of water. By the law of sinking bodies, it descends; that illustrates the law of sin. Now I get a piece of cork, and fasten that also to the rod, and placing it in the water I see that by the law of floating bodies, it has a tendency to ascend. But the lifting power of the cork is not strong enough to overcome the downward tendency of the lead, so that it may be kept from sinking. It rises and sinks alternately. There you have the 'up and down' life. 'I myself' by the cork serving the law of floating bodies, and 'I myself' by the lead obeying the law of sinking bodies. 'Up and down.'

"Now turn to 8:2 and we read, 'For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death.' What has taken place? Let us suppose that I place my rod with the lead and the cork into a little life-belt, and I put them into the tank of water. The rod now does not sink. Why? Because it is in the life-belt. There is sufficient lifting-power in it to keep it from sinking; but it is only as it is in the life-belt that it has the benefit of that law. It is the power of the superior law counteracting the other law. The lead is not taken away, but the rod has the benefit of a stronger power so long as it abides in the life-belt.

"A working man to whom I used this illustration at once grasped the principle, and in prayer afterwards he said, 'O God, we thank Thee for the life-belt, we thank Thee for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is the life-belt. We thank Thee we cannot sink so long as we abide in the life-belt; but may we never forget , O Lord, that while we are floating inside the life-belt, that the lead is there all the same.'

"Here, then, are the main points to be borne in mind. Sin is a load of guilt, but Christ died for me; sin is a master, but I died with Christ; sin is a law, but by abiding in Christ I am made 'free from the law of sin and death.' It is not an attainment, you see. It is not something that has taken place in you, so that you no longer have the tendency to sin. That is not it at all. The law of gravitation is not suspended when, instead of sinking, you float on the water within the life-belt; but it is counteracted by a superior law, and thus is 'the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus.'

"It is thus that I read Romans 7. We do not triumph by virtue of our own struggles and efforts to keep ourselves from sinking, but by abiding in the life-belt and letting Christ have the whole weight of our load, which He counteracts by His superior power. Oh, to know the secret of this abiding! That is what we have to learn. Let us begin to learn it now. Hence we see we must not only know what it is to be in Christ in the sense of standing for our acceptance and justification, but also in the sense of abiding, that is, of fellowship with Him, if we would live in the power of His victorious life."