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The War between the Mind and the Flesh
John,
22 For I delight in the law of God according to the inward man. 23 But 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.
In Chapter 7 of the letter to the Romans, the Apostle Paul reaches his penultimate goal that brings his opening themes of law, sin, and the gospel together into a surprising and relevant application. This is highlighted in terms of the ongoing war between the mind and the flesh. Romans 7, particularly verses 13-25, has caused no shortage of controversy and disagreement among Christians who fall into one of two viewpoints on the passage. One camp reads this section and interprets it as Paul’s retrospective view of himself as an unbeliever recognizing now the battle between the mind and flesh, volleying as it were, between the two and often hindered by doing the things that he does not want to do (Romans 7:19). The other camp interprets this passage as characteristic of a believer, who though saved and being sanctified still struggles between the old nature, i.e. the “law in [his members]”, and the spirit or law of the mind (Romans 7:23). The solution to this dilemma is found within the passage itself. Would an unbeliever recognize this internal struggle? Would there even be the possibility that an unbeliever would have the Spirit allowing the possibility of vacillating between the two? Simply put, no.
Romans 7:13-25, highlighted by our passage quoted above, sets forth something of a spiritual crisis, one in which Paul’s own frustration is felt in the aforementioned doing what he doesn’t want to do. If we applied this passage to ourselves, we would surely share in the frustration and recognize our own internal struggles. Is this struggle between what we want to do and what we don’t want to do our destiny? Are we to resign ourselves to our various sins that beset us with either a born this way or what I’m prone to attitude, a kind of blase this is just who I am attitude? As the chapter concludes, we see Paul’s own resignation, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Certainly, if the Apostle concludes this struggle with indwelling sin by calling himself a wretched man, can we consider ourselves any better off? But Paul doesn’t leave his question as rhetorical. He answers it. More than that, he answers it by stating that it is God through the Lord Jesus Christ Who will deliver him. But how? Certainly, we can see that at our death, and subsequently resurrection into glory we will be delivered from our body of death and our flesh that is presently beset with sins, but that’s in the future. What about now? What about our present struggle in this present evil age?
Paul has already given hopeful clues in this passage from Chapter 7, but it’s his next chapter that God through Paul unleashes the hope for believers. This should remind us of a key principle in Scripture reading and what is called hermeneutics, or the science of interpretation, keep reading. Sometimes as we read, the answer to a potential dilemma or the context of a passage is not fully developed, so we keep reading. This is how the Holy Spirit works in illumination, opening up the mind of the believer to have understanding of God’s Word. Such is the case in Romans 7-8, which we ought to remind ourselves are not original chapter breaks. Paul, and all of the other divinely inspired authors of Scripture, did not sit down and insert chapter breaks into their writings, these were added much later, sometime around 13th Century for the chapters and around the 16th Century for verses all of which were combined for the first time in the Geneva Bible of 1560. Sometimes they are helpful, of course for memorization and locating a passage, but sometimes they too arbitrarily split a passage.
In Romans 8:1 we find hope for the Romans 7 believer, perhaps torn between the flesh and the spirit, between wanting to do what’s right and doing what they don’t want to do.
There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus
Linked back to the previous passage by the use of the word, therefore, Paul let’s us know that there is NO condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. Why is that a hope-filled critical message in light of the struggle we just read in Chapter 7? Because as believers we ought not live in and with the mindset of defeat or resigning ourselves to guilt-riddled life thinking that we can never be good enough, that Jesus doesn’t love us (or stopped loving us), or that we can or should impose a punishment on ourselves for what we have done. No, none of that! Paul reminds us with authority that there is no condemnation for those who are in, that is speaking of our union, Christ Jesus. The idea of condemnation here is the concept of penalty. We might think of it in starker terms as a final condemnation, a sent to hell kind of phrase. Either way the word is taken, it is non-existent for the believer. God is not going to condemn a genuine believer because he or she has sinned. Christian, you have got to realize that all of your sin, yes past, present, and future sins, were paid for in Christ’s death on the cross! All of them! Think for a minute about how many of your sins were yet to happen when Christ was crucified. Since it was 2000 years ago, that would be all of them, yet He died for you anyway and saved you not because you hadn’t sinned or were better than someone else, but for His own glory.
The apostle goes on in chapter 8 to tell us of another law, in contrast to those laws which he had previously laid out, namely the law of his members and the law of his mind. This law spoken of now is the law of the Spirit and it is that law that has set us free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. What does this mean practically? It means that we are not torn between two positions, that of the flesh and that of the mind, but we are free. We are not to live in that struggle because there is another law, that of the Spirit, which offers us freedom in Christ. We don’t stand waffling between two positions or lamenting about how it is that we can stop sinning. No, we are to look towards another law, that which offers freedom in Christ.
Think of it this way, Romans 7 sets forth an argument that can look alot like a volleyball or tennis court, maybe a pickleball court for you more adventurous readers, meaning that our lives can look like a volley back and forth across the net between the spirit and the flesh. Back and forth we go, lamenting as Paul does along the way about how we can’t seem to do what we want without doing what we don’t want. Enter chapter 8 of Romans. Keeping with our analogy, Paul calls us to walk away from that court onto another court, one governed by the law of the Spirit, one that has no net to volley over because we have been set free. Paul continues on this concept of freedom in Christ by the Spirit by stating that it was our own flesh that was too weak to obey the law, but God provided another way. He sent His only Son Jesus, in the literal flesh, to condemn sin in the flesh. Not us, not what we deserved, but His Son. Jesus was born in order to die on the cross and take the punishment, i.e. the wrath of God, that we deserved. In His death He defeated sin and in His resurrection, He defeated death! This is the hope that Paul leads us to.
Christian, we have got to move forward from the volleying of the mind between the flesh and the spirit, between doing what we don’t want to while not doing what we do want, to use Paul’s phrasing. The way we do this is to set our minds on the Spirit (Romans 8:5). Setting of the mind is not difficult, but it is necessary. It’s in reality nothing more than looking towards, walking on, and resting at the netless court we referenced earlier. All the work has been done on our behalf in Christ Jesus. When we set our minds on that reality we are doing nothing less than calling Christ’s work to mind; reminding ourselves of His sacrifice in taking the condemnation that we deserved; and preaching to ourselves daily these realities that the Spirit has applied to us in setting us free from sin and death.
