“For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.” (CSB – Read the chapter)
As a parent, you quickly learn that every different age your kids go through has its challenges, but also its joys. They’re adorable when they’re babies, but you don’t get any sleep. Toddlers are great comic relief, but the tantrums get pretty old. When they’re in the no man’s land of early- to middle-elementary school they’re the most fun because of how much they are drawn to just play, but that’s also when they can start to become little punks. Well, I’ve got two right now that are teenagers. (Now there’s a sentence that makes you start feeling old…) Teenagers have attitudes. And emotions. In spades. But they are also reaching the point that they are starting to be able to meaningfully process the world around them in ways that reflect real critical thinking. You can start having an actual conversation with a teenager in ways other stages don’t quite allow. They also ask good questions that desire real answers. Today’s post is the result of one of those good questions. Maybe you’ve asked this one before. Here are some of my thoughts.
As I was putting one of my boys to bed last night, he shared out some of his friends (who are mostly all church kids of some flavor) had been talking about the unforgivable sin, what it was and how it worked. I should clarify: they weren’t talking about how to commit such an offense, but rather seeking to understand it so they didn’t stumble across it by accident.
We talked about that for a little while. I told him that the passage where Jesus introduces us to the idea of an unforgivable sin is found in Matthew 12. I explained that Jesus’ words don’t mean what they seem to mean on their face, and that context matters, both locally and Scripture-wide. Jesus was responding there to the Pharisees’ responding to His healing of a blind man by insisting that He must be a demon or powered by demons in some way. They saw the goodness of God unfolding right in front of their eyes and they insisted it was evil. That kind of a thorough rejection of God and His goodness can lead us down a path where forgiveness does indeed become impossible for us. This is not because there’s ever a point at which God finally throws in the towel on us, but rather because we so harden our heart to His offer of grace through Christ that we lose the ability to receive it.
We can imagine God’s forgiveness to be like a giant umbrella. It covers an enormous amount of square mileage. In fact, there’s not a sin you could conceive of or commit that He isn’t willing to forgive. In fact, in Christ, He has already pronounced it forgiven. But if you commit sin and then refuse to come under the area of His umbrella of grace, no forgiveness will be coming because you have refused to enter into it.
That answer seemed to satisfy him on the matter, but that led us into a subsequent conversation. If, as a follower of Jesus, you fall into a pattern of sin, how do you climb back out of it? How can we make sure that we don’t harden our hearts to the point that we can’t receive His forgiveness in the first place? Is God ever going to finally throw up His hands and walk away from us after we have made a profession of faith in Jesus because of some pattern of ongoing sin in our lives?
Can I just have a proud dad moment to say how good of a question that was? That’s a really good series of questions. Those kinds of questions are asked by somebody who is trying to make sense of his own faith and to follow Jesus consistently and well. Those are growing faith questions. If you ever get questions like that from your kid, don’t brush them aside or give some kind of a pat answer designed to weasel your way out of a challenging conversation to have. Engage with them. If you don’t know how to answer them, then go with your kid to someone who does and learn the answers together.
Personally, I struggled with that line of questioning some when I was around his age too. Fortunately, the Scriptures give us both hope that we aren’t alone in asking them, as well as help toward an answer. In Romans 7, just before Paul’s big finish on his presentation of the basic Gospel message, he takes us in the dark depths of struggles with sin as a follower of Jesus. The whole section in vv. 15-25 starts with his declaration that he doesn’t understand how he can keep drifting back into sin even though he really does want to follow Jesus. “For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate.”
The wording of the passage can be hard to follow, and from the time that I had to translate the passage from Greek in seminary, I can tell you that the wording is just as confusing in its original language. It’s a beautifully written passage from a literary standpoint. The head-spinning nature of the wording helps to heighten the sense of confusion and anxiety and frustration over this internal challenge that so many of us have experienced. Whether you accept a Christian vision of morality or not, you have some set of standards that you have adopted which govern your behavior. Maybe you did this consciously, maybe it was unconscious, but they are there all the same. And you don’t keep them consistently. Whatever those standards happen to be, you violate them and on a regular basis. And trying harder has never really seemed to work for very long to keep you in line with them. This is all called being human.
So, what do we do with this? How do we climb out of this pattern of sin that keeps trying to get a stranglehold on our lives? Paul tells us by the end of the passage before going on in chapter 8 to further unpack the glories of this answer. And this is going to sound trite and just like something a preacher would say, but the answer is Jesus. Jesus is the one who gives us the help we need in this case. Still, though, as much as that may be the right answer, it is abstract. Let’s pour a bit of concrete on it.
The answer is first and foremost Jesus because we don’t have the wherewithal to resist sin on our own. Oh, we can make fairly respectably runs at it. You know this because you’ve done it. You’ve dug deep into your moral core before and kept yourself on the straight and narrow for a good long while using nothing but willpower. That’s great. But it didn’t last. Eventually you caved and found yourself right back where you started. Jesus, by the presence of the Holy Spirit in us, can give us strength to resist sin that goes beyond our own.
But that’s not the only way to gain traction here, and as strange as this is going to sound, it’s not enough on its own. No, that doesn’t mean Jesus Himself isn’t enough. It means that if we try to tackle this challenge with just us and Jesus, we’re still going to fail at it. This is because He never intended for it to be just us and Him. We need other people involved in the process too. More directly, we need accountability.
If you are struggling with some matter of sin, and you want to gain freedom from the hold of that sin, one of the most important things you need to do is to confess it. Tell someone else about your struggle. More specifically, tell someone other than just Jesus. Tell Him too, but you need someone who you can trust, who is spiritually mature, and who will help give you encouragement and conviction when you need it, and you need to tell him what is going on with a fair amount of detail. Be specific, not vague. You need to then give this person both the access and the permission to hold you accountable. Ideally, you can be this kind of person for him too.
As a part of this seeking accountability, you need to identify what kinds of situations trigger your temptations into this sin. Has it become a solace from a stressful world for you? Is it something you are doing as an act of passive aggressiveness toward a loved one? Has it just simply become an addiction for you? Are there certain times of day you are more drawn to it than others? Are there places where your access is easier than others? How can you cut off those lines of access? How can you receive accountability during those times?
You don’t just need this one other person, though. You need the church. I don’t mean you need to air all of your struggles and dirty laundry before the whole church, but you need the encouragement and example of other believers endeavoring to live faithfully before the Lord. Sometimes just seeing other people doing it right can be a help in your own conviction to do the same. Knowing there are other people who share similar struggles as you – because most of us share a similar range of struggles even if they may manifest in slightly different ways – can be an encouragement to keep moving forward toward righteousness together.
One last thing, and then we’ll wrap this up. You need to replace bad habit with good ones. What this doesn’t mean is that if you just pray enough or read the Bible enough that you’ll be able to resist temptation more effectively. You are not likely to “pray away” your sin struggles. What I do mean is that your sin is probably connected with some habit or another. If you change that habit, you’ll make doing the sin less convenient. If you replace the habit that leads you into sin with a habit that directs your attention more intentionally toward things that are true, honorable, just, pure, lovely, commendable, morally excellent, and praiseworthy, you will be doing yourself a great favor and giving yourself a leg up on avoiding the sin trap in the first place.
The battle against the flesh, as Paul called it, is one that will be with us as long as we are in this flesh. Make wise and courageous choices that will lead you down the path of righteousness, but don’t get overly discouraged if and when you fall away from that. Instead, repent with humility, seek forgiveness from those you have hurt, put in place some guardrails to help you stay on the path, get help with accountability from someone you trust, build better habits into your daily rhythm, and live in the grace and forgiveness that Jesus has already won for you on the cross. These things will set you on the path to where you want to go.
And just for fun on this Friday, here’s a song about teenagers that captures them pretty well. If you’re a parent of one, I suspect you’ll enjoy this. Give it a listen.
The Nexus 
You are believing a wrong interpretation of Romans 7.
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Hi Crossroman, thanks for your note. What’s your take on the correct understanding of the passage here?
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The two views are either that Paul was speaking as a Christian OR not as a Christian. He was not speaking as a Christian but was relating the experience (his past experience) of one under law, in a flowing narrative which told the story of what happens under the old covenant, why it had to change. He says that he is in bondage (sold) to sin, which for a Christian is the very opposite of the case, (bought with His blood) and that he does not know the name of his deliverer, Jesus, during this time of narration which does include the description of being of flesh (which all men, especially Jesus, are/was). He is not “Christian” until Romans 8 where he is not in the flesh but in the Spirit and 8:2 defeats the law of sin and death which is in 7:25.
Please google “clinging to a counterfeit cross” as I have not the web address at the moment and would have to interrupt this reply to get hold of it 🙂
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No worries on having to direct me so you didn’t have to interrupt your response.
Yes, those are indeed the two major views on the passage. I’ve studied both a fair bit. (I may have even written a paper on them in seminary…I can’t remember that for sure now.) On balance, I find the arguments, not to mention the lived human experience as a follower of Jesus, in favor of the view I expressed in my post more compelling and likelier to be correct than the alternative that you ably present here.
Fortunately, neither position precludes a belief that Jesus rose from the dead and that our only hope for salvation is found in placing our faith in Him and Him alone. We can agree to disagree on the exact understanding of Paul’s words here, while agreeing that the goal of every Christian is to complete the path of sanctification with the abiding help of the Holy Spirit.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me! I really appreciate that. Have a great week.
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Thanks. I am sorry that we won’t be able to get into it a bit more. The article I referred you to is comprehensive and I have looked at this for many years – My concern being that people are calling the defeat of those under the law, under the old covenant, the victory of Christ. They are led to believe that sin will always have power over them and that law still dominates. Thank you, may your week be great too 🙂
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I don’t disagree with you on that point really at all. The apostle Paul calls believers saints, not sinners. If we don’t think about ourselves as we truly are in Christ, we won’t live worthy of the high calling we have received in Him. We are to be holy as He is holy, the apostle Peter reminded us in his letter. More to the point, we absolutely cannot let believers think that they are going to struggle with sin and that’s somehow okay. It’s not. Sin and a relationship with Jesus are mutually exclusive things.
That being said, the lived experience of believers across the last 2,000 years is that even though we are new creations in Christ, we nonetheless still struggle with sin. We battle constantly against our flesh and its desires. And our only hope in this battle is to throw ourselves on Christ and to rely on His strength (which often comes through His church).
This is why I find the understanding of Romans 7 that sees Paul as talking about the struggle believers have to walk the path of righteousness the more correct one. That understanding doesn’t give us coverage or an excuse for unrighteousness, it merely reflects reality as we experience it and points us to where our hope in this struggle is and is alone: Christ and His righteousness.
Good stuff! Thanks again for your thoughts. If you find that article and want to post the link here, I’ll be glad to give it a read sometime.
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https://www.truthaccordingtoscripture.com/documents/books/counterfeit-cross/romans-7.php#.YIEbwB3iuUk
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Thanks. The thing is that we need to understand the truth of scripture. If a thing CAN be properly understood in truth and not lie, then we are compelled to so understand it. And this Romans 7 CAN be truthfully understood, it’s just that, as scripture says, some things that Paul writes are hard to understand, We have to be willing to understand them in the truth which they have been intended and provided. If we turn truth into lie then we have fallen short of the task. I have both provided and written many articles on Romans 7 and obviously some of the detail of nuances? but not even that, simply of seeking the truth of all things. I could say for example, that the notion of there being a 1000 year literal reign of Christ on the earth after His “second coming” is false. If that disqualifies me from my view on Romans 7 also being false, then so be it. I will repeat that link again in case there was something wrong with it , typo or whatever. I know you can edit this info so am not worried about it being too long :).
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I’ll give that link a read, but probably tomorrow sometime. I don’t edit people on here unless they explicitly request it. I would much rather let people speak for themselves for good or for ill, than stifle or otherwise present a misleading conversation but which makes me look better.
On Romans 7, I agree that if a thing can be properly understood, we should endeavor to do understand it. There are some parts of the Scriptures, though, with more than one possible interpretation, each of which can be equally well harmonized with the rest of the Scriptures. In these cases, the position we take matters, but not eternally so. As a result, we can disagree, even vigorously, but still remain brothers and sisters in Christ, equally committed to advance of His kingdom and the pursuit of His character.
Our ability to be united around the essentials, have liberty and charity around the non-essentials, and have the wisdom to know which issues are which, is paramount to our cohesion as a body. We can disagree agreeably and still pursue Christ with a unified front.
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Thanks.
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I’ve got a question I was going to ask Wed night but I didn’t want to break up the line of thought. I heard in a revival once the preacher mentioned that once you are saved your salvation is assured no matter what you do in life other than totally renouncing God. His theory was that if you are a true believer you cannot lose your salvation but rather if you are not a practicing Christian you will still receive your rewards in Heaven but the rewards will not be as big as someone who lives by the scripture. What say ye?
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Well, first I say you can always interrupt the flow of thought. That’s what that time is for: big questions that don’t have quick and easy answers.
The second thing I say is that I agree with him in part, but not in whole. I don’t think a person can lose his salvation once it has been truly given and received. I agree with him on that point. There are just too many places that talk about the permanence of our standing in Christ once we have it. On the other hand, there are several warning passages (especially the four major ones in Hebrews) that seem to suggestion salvation is something that can be lost. I’ve written on all four of those when I worked through the letter a few years ago. I don’t think that’s what the mean when rightly understood, but like I talked about Wednesday, they are intended to make those believers who might assume on the permanence of salvation as a license to sin freely with the net of grace to fall back on when things go sideways think twice before committing themselves very far to that line of thinking.
For those folks who once appeared to make a profession of faith, but who later seem to have walked away from it completely, the conclusion we draw about them depends on some different factors. Do they persist in their rejection for the rest of their natural life? In that case, I would argue that they never really had salvation to begin with. They may have been a profession of faith, but it was never more than just the words they spoke in making it. It never penetrated to the depths of their heart to take root there. They said some words they may have even been pressured into saying by a well-meaning parent or extended family member, but their heart was never really in it.
Does the person who seems to have rejected their previous faith return to it? Then it may have been nothing more than a spiritually dry season or perhaps a rebellious one.
I’m not as sure about the idea of there being greater rewards for some and lesser rewards for others in Heaven. This is because I don’t think there’s such a thing as someone who is a non-practicing Christian. That’s a contradiction of terms. Either you are following Jesus, or you’re not. Period. If you’re not, then you are not going to be (nor should you expect to be) rewarded like you are. That’s silly, not to mention dishonest. Trying to sell that line is an attempt to give false hope to people because you don’t want to tell them the truth. If you aren’t following Jesus, you shouldn’t expect to receive eternal life.
Does that help some? It’s not as thorough as I could do with a whole blog post, but it gives you a bit.
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It does. Here’s another question that’s bugged me – can you be saved on your death bed. I have heard that my great grandfather was, for lack of a better word, a hellion. He was a bootlegger for a chunk of his adult life and my dad said there was a rumor (never substantiated) that he killed a man over a bill unpaid for hootch. My great grandmother was a Christian who daily read her Bible and prayed for my great grandfather every day. He lived to be 92 and died in his own bed. My dad said the day he died my ggm was holding his hand asking him if he believed in Jesus. He asked for forgiveness, asked for the Lord to save him and that he died with a smile on his face. My great grandmother exclaimed she would see him in heaven. I know from Jesus at the cross that we can be saved at the last moment but I’ve often wondered if someone asking for forgiveness on their death bed is doing so out of fear vs. actual remorse and whether the Lord takes that into consideration. Seems to me someone near death could maybe not even have the mental faculties to ask for true forgiveness and it’s the Lords way of putting the loved one at ease for the rest of their time here. Maybe sometimes? Maybe I’m way off base.
Thanks for the answers!
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That’s a struggle that many others have shared. My thinking is this: The grace of God is available as long as we draw breath in this life. We can receive it as long as we are alive to do so. If that reception comes early and enriches the whole of a long and fruitful life, great. If it comes only moments before the end, it is still received.
Now, can we know for sure whether someone has received it? Yes and no. No, in the sense that Jesus is the only one who knows that. But a truly transformed life is going to show evidence of that transformation. Jesus said we will be known by our fruits, so there’s that. A profession of faith without accompanying works isn’t worth much and shouldn’t be trusted. And I suspect not a few believing survivors of deceased loved ones whose salvation status was unclear have buoyed their worried spirits with false hope. A friend of mine was killed in Iraq when I was in college. He had gone to church with me on and off through middle school, but not much after that because we moved out of the neighborhood where we had lived almost next door to each other. When he died, I remember his mom calling me desperate for assurance that he was going to be in Heaven. The family never attended church and never has to my knowledge. I honestly had no idea if he had ever made a profession of faith and hadn’t seen evidence of it. I called my youth minister from those years and asked him. He said he had had a conversation with him that included what he took to be a profession of faith. Did he really? I don’t know. I can’t imagine Tim would have lied about that. Either way, it gave his parents a great deal of comfort.
Can someone give their life to Christ on their deathbed? Of course. Do we know for sure that they really mean it? No. We won’t until we get there. Some people have really clear minds all the way to the end. Others, not so much. On the whole, it’s wise not to put off that decision. We don’t know when our time in this world is going to come to an end. If we wait, thinking we’ll have time later, we may find that we suddenly don’t. Faith muscles don’t suddenly develop in a moment of need just like regular muscles don’t do that. It’s far better to accept Him now and not have to worry about it. And to encourage others to do the same.
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Well said. Which brings up one more question. Do we know our loved ones in heaven? I always assumed we did but I read a pastor who said he thought we would but would not be aware of any loved ones who are not there as the sadness of wondering if we had could have done more for their salvation would not be present in a Heaven of total bliss and happiness. Not sure how much of that is Biblical or just speculation. Sorry, if I’m not careful this is gonna turn into another Ark-athon. Sorry Ark, kidding if you’re out there.
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Sorry I never responded to this. Somehow this comment got sent to my spam folder. I have no idea why. Sometimes it does that with your comments, but only yours. It must be a conspiracy. To your question, we don’t know. There seems to be an indication of some awareness of what’s happening on earth on the part of those who have died before us in Revelation 6, but how extensive that is, we don’t know for sure. The answer there is not going to be able to avoid being speculative because the text isn’t ever clear about it. I get the sense we’ll know people, but I can’t cite chapter and verse to prove it. Good question. And, of course, now that this is two weeks past due, Ark probably won’t ever see this one. But you did say his name twice here before he came back and started agitating again. It’s like the movie…
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No problem. Sometimes I have problems commenting- probably something I’m doing. Thanks for responding today. I’ll try not to say it more than once. I’m kidding, man whose name rhymes with park. Lol.
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thanks J.
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