Episode 24: Stuck in the “In Between”

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Speaker 1
This is further a weekly show for the people of Harmony Bible Church, where we seek to revisit and expand on Sunday sermons with the goal of growing deeper in biblical truth that transforms our lives. Welcome back to Further. I'm Brenton Grimm and we have Matt Mitchell with us again today.

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Speaker 2
Greetings.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, Thanks, man. Yeah. This last week, most of you heard Steve DeWitt, which again was Chris Carr's old pastor when he was in Indiana. Steve's come here a couple times and both times he's been great. What a what a great communicator. And yeah, he had a lot of great things to say on Romans seven. So that was really good.

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Speaker 1
But also in Fort Madison, many of you probably won't know this, but Matt Mitchell has been preaching there live a lot and so we haven't been streaming from from Danville or Burlington as much. How's that been going in? Fort Madison's have been good to have some live preaching down there now.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, it's been a lot of fun. I think we've gotten some good feedback of people that are enjoying it, but they still enjoy the live stream. And Chris is on there and it's been a good opportunity for me as a young pastor to just have more reps of learn how to teach God's Word. Well, and I've been grateful for it.

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. Then as we look forward, next week is going to be we're going to start our short Jonah series. So we'll have four weeks of of Jonah. Clay's going to going to start that out. And so next week he will be in here with me and we'll be jumping into that. So we're excited to move forward. And after after the four weeks of Jonah, we'll be back to Romans eight.

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Speaker 1
So. Well, I think we're all looking forward to Romans eight. So, all right, let's start out here. I want to talk a little bit about the the controversy of Romans seven. And I think Steve got into it a little bit, talking about perfectionism, but I don't think that you even kind of mentioned it in your sermon on on.

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Speaker 2
So I chose not to address it for the sermon anyways.

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Speaker 1
But I'll give a little disclaimer before we get into this that we are not experts on the subject.

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Speaker 2
By no means.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, and there's a lot of smart people on both sides of this, but we do kind of want to give you just an idea. I thought this was a good platform to to give you guys kind of a surface level idea of of what the controversy is and maybe some implications of it. So I'll let you expand on this.

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Speaker 1
But essentially the debate is over whether Paul is speaking in this passage about his post conversion state or his pre conversion state. So in other words, is he talking about his experience as a Christian or before he was saved? So can you kind of lay out just your understanding of both of those sides?

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Speaker 2
Yeah, certainly. So I didn't know there was different views on this at all until I had an assignment once a Bible school, where the task was to study both of them kind of write something on it and where you land. And so I think most people, myself included, if you're just devotional reading the Bible, not study Bible, but just, just reading it, you're going to get Romans seven.

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Speaker 2
And then once you get into versus 12 to the end or a 13 to the end, you are going to be reading it like, Oh, wow, I sympathize with Paul. He's got this struggle that goes on and he doesn't do the things he wants to do. And he and he delights in the God's law on his inner being, but he calls himself a wretch and he can't fulfill what he always wants to do.

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Speaker 2
And there's this war raging and I finally sympathize the Apostle Paul. And I think that is a really good way to interpret it. And that's the way I took it and still do and preach that My sermon, Steve, to it did the same. But there's also a line of thought where some great guys who have been studying the Bible that are scholars that know all the languages like Greek, and they know Hebrew.

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Speaker 2
And so Greek is what the New Testament would have been written in. And for a variety of reasons, they take this other approach where they think that Paul seemed so defeated in Roman seven or not not Paul, but the eyes, the eyes statements, which seems like. Paul Right? If he's speaking in first person, you know, at the time he's writing Romans about his current struggles with sin, he seems so defeated that there's no way this could be the normal Christian experience.

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Speaker 2
It must be an immature Christian. That's that's kind of a nuanced view. Like, I that doesn't understand the gospel quite well enough yet. I think like kind of growing up or somebody who is this is the predominant other view is this is like a pre converted Jew who is grown up under the law and loves God's law but can't fulfill it.

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Speaker 2
And there's this struggle that goes on and that's kind of that's kind of the route they take. And so, yeah, those are those the two, without getting really far deep into it, it's people think it's at this. Paul It's still a current struggle that he has that every Christian has and or it's Paul kind of relating with his Jewish Christian audience that before the gospel they couldn't really fulfill it.

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Speaker 2
They wanted to just with the law. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. I appreciate that. That's a good overview. I think we see in Luke verse 18, I think you can kind of get the, the idea of this kind of defeatist attitude of like for example in verse 18, he says for I know that, that nothing good dwells in me, that is in my flesh, for I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.

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Speaker 1
And that is kind of, yeah, it is pretty defeatist. But at the same time, I think if we're honest with ourselves, that's, that's where we are a lot of the time. We have we have sin struggles. Sure it is. It's hard to get past those, right?

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And and I just think that even through this, the reason it sits so well with me and as you're reading it as a normal Christian experience is Paul gets that place right says wretched man that I am and in verse 24 who is who will deliver me from this body of death? And verse 25 is he is making it so crystal clear, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord, exclamation point that just even in the midst of the struggle, we've got to look back to Christ and we can not fulfill God's standards on our own, apart from the Gospel and apart from the Spirit come to live inside of us.

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Speaker 2
And that's that's kind of the crescendo of the whole thing, is there? Yes, there's a struggle going on, but praise be to God through Jesus Christ, our Lord, that he's the deliver. He's the one that's going to be curious through.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. And I think one thing and I was as I was kind of reading through it and thinking through both of those sides was just even the fact that he, he desires to do good. Right. He, he has these desires that he knows what's right and he, he's upset that he, that he can't do it. And I just again, I'm no expert on this and I I'm not diving into the exegesis as much as others have, but I just look back to Romans three and I see his his own explanation of what someone is before Christ.

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Speaker 1
Sure. And we see no.

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Speaker 2
One does what.

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Speaker 1
Is righteous. No, not one. No one understands. No one seeks for God. And so for Paul to have these these desires for good, these desires to glorify God, to please God, it seems like to me that that that is going to be someone that is in a regenerative state, someone that is already a Christian.

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Speaker 2
Sure. Yeah. And one more thing on that, too, I think. Romans seven verse nine, This would've been last week, but I think it kind of shed some light on this, too. Paul says, I was once alive, apart from the law and not alive spiritually. But basically I think he's using language saying there was a time where I was free from the law to do whatever I wanted to do.

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Speaker 2
And they says, But when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. Yeah. And so I think that that gives us an example into, you know, I was once kind of free to do whatever I wanted. And that's the way we would describe ourselves before coming to know Christ that we don't really have a care in the world for what what God necessarily wanted for us.

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Speaker 2
We were just doing our own thing and we were just driven by sin and a selfish underlying factor, you know, led everything we did. And so I think verse nine helpful for that too.

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Speaker 1
And yeah, yeah, in some ways I think that this is helpful even for us. I know it's kind of a common thing to say that even I think Nathan said it last week, even if I was half the man that Paul was, I'd be far better than I am. And I think, like, we we all look up to Paul, right?

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Speaker 1
We we see him as a kind of a spiritual giant, and yet we see him going through the same struggles that we do that we have all the time. And so I think that in some ways it's an encouragement. But also you're right that it is an example of what we should do, that we we look to Christ in the end.

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Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yeah. And it's you can tell you can tell the frustrations there. You know, it's complicated. It's frustrating. It's is discouraging. I mentioned that in my sermon that the struggles real it's discouraging. It's frustrating. I think we see even see some of that in Romans eight, that there's this groaning that takes place in all of creation but within ourselves, that we want to get rid of the this flesh that hangs on and still grips us at times and be fully glorified and perfect with the Lord.

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Speaker 2
So.

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Speaker 1
Okay, good. So I'm going to take this a little different direction. What you actually just said will play off of that. So the the the idea of the flesh. Right. So there was in the first and second century, this this kind of thought and this this line of belief called Gnosticism. And one thing that came along with that was this belief of dualism where the the flesh is evil, but the spirit is good.

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Speaker 1
And there's this kind of the dichotomy between between the physical realm and the spiritual realm, kind of the yin and the yang situation. And I think just kind of a overview read of the scripture of this passage, I think you can maybe see it can it can almost seem like that's what Paul's saying. The flesh is evil. Everything that's physical is what we need to get rid of, and we need to embrace the spiritual again.

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Speaker 1
Can we talk about the kind of Gnostic belief it really is not, not even close to a Christian belief, right?

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Speaker 2
Certainly it's not because.

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Speaker 1
We believe Christians believe that the God created not only spiritual, but he also created the physical realm. And yes, if we look back at Genesis, we see that God did create our flesh and it was good. And so there's nothing inherently evil about flesh, right. But but that it's been corrupted. And so, yeah, I guess talk about that a little bit in your thoughts on it.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. And that's that's really good. And I think you could at first glance read Romans seven or other spots in the Bible. It talks about, you know, battling into the flesh and and come to the conclusion, you know, I need to escape this world. I need to get rid of this body. That's what's holding me back from being with God and being perfect.

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Speaker 2
And so I you know, that narcissism was anything physical is bad. Our bodies are bad. That's what's holding us back. And we need to obtain our ultimate enlightenment is, you know, getting rid of this body and just being spirit. That's that's what it's all about. And that's really dangerous because that's not the way the Bible reads. And we see in Genesis chapter one that God creates everything visible and invisible, and he calls it all good and the beginning and and then the end of the Bible isn't us spending forever up in in heaven as spirits, but it's actually spirit and body coming back together with a resurrected body and a fully perfect and glorified spirit

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Speaker 2
dwelling on a new earth. This earth renewed and in the capital city of Heaven and Jerusalem. And so the big story, it's all those pieces are there and here, I think and I'm not an expert on this either there is a lot of different ways. Flesh is used in the Bible, and sometimes it is talking about the physical body, skin, bones, hair are members of the body, and sometimes like in this, this context, the flesh, you know, that's raging as a war raging with the spirit, the that's that's talking that's not talking about our body, our physical body, but our sinful nature that's in this wrestling match with the spirit and it's a I think

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Speaker 2
I'm quoting John Piper here, but I think he talks about the flesh that we still have our sinful nature, even after coming to a crisis like the guerrilla warfare that's still taking place in our bodies. It's like Jesus has won because of his atonement in his resurrection. And is it? He ceded the right hand to Father soon to return.

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Speaker 2
Yet we're still in this struggle. And it's there's these little groups of guerrilla warfare that still try to still want to reign. But that's that's the that's the battle run. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
Yeah. It's good. And I mean Gnosticism was was rampant throughout the writing of the Bible. Paul was speaking against it. John spoke against it right many different times. And I think that part of the danger of it, we we had talked about, I don't know it was a while ago on the podcast, but we talked about asceticism and this idea that we kind of we we punish we punish our bodies to, to remove sin, right?

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Speaker 1
So we kind of do all these, all these works and kind of extreme work sometimes to to kill our flesh because we rightly see the issue as sin, but we kind of wrongly attribute that to to our flesh. And so for a lot of reasons, it's it's, it's a it's not a it's a it's a dangerous belief. And so, yeah, we see many different teachings against it in the Bible.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. And I think it's it's good you brought it up and just yeah. I want everybody to be clear that that would listen that this is not a battle between spirit and body and the body's holding us back and it's bad. It's, it's all good because God made us good but we are fallen. And that that's that perfect, glorified state.

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Speaker 2
We're not there yet, but it will be body and spirit. And not just a not just spirit.

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Speaker 1
So mat for your your application points, you had four of them this week and just read through them. Here they were. Don't look to the law, look to the gospel, look at where you're sowing and then look forward to your future glory. And those are kind of your your four application points of your next steps. But I want to start with the the you you said don't look to the law for your position or progress before God.

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Speaker 1
And I think could you could you expand on that a little bit because I think to some extent we should be measuring ourselves against the law to make sure that we are progressing right. So we need some objective standard to kind of see right where are we in our in our spiritual walk. So can you just kind of expand on that and maybe we'll talk about that for a little bit?

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Speaker 2
Yeah, certainly in my sermon, I have enough time to to pass all this out. But what I was trying to get across was we're stuck in this in-between time between being saved and being fully saved, fully glorified and perfect with God and eternity. And in this in-between time as believers, the primary place, we should not be looking at the primary place we should we should be looking is the gospel.

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Speaker 2
But I started off as the here's the place. We should not look for our position, which is our justification. We've talked about that many weeks. But I was real briefly, you are right, standing in approval before God, we should not be looking to the law because we can't fulfill the law on our own. But Christ has and we're no longer under the law for just our justification, but we're under grace because we're in Christ.

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Speaker 2
And so our position don't look to the law like how how am I doing with God? Eternally. Does he approve of me? Don't look to the law because we've all failed. Look to Christ. He's come to save for sure. And then as far as progress goes, I was using progress, thinking of our sanctification and okay. And there's many people who have an ongoing battle for them is struggle with assurance of their salvation.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. Which is which is big like. Like, am I saved? Am I not saved? Does God still have me? That's never been a struggle for me. But what I've struggled terribly with is how well am I doing with the Lord today? Like as He pleases me today. Like if I die, I'm pretty certain I'm going to have I shouldn't say I'm pretty certain.

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Speaker 2
I'm confident. I'm fully confident I'm going to go to heaven. I've always had that assurance forever reason. That hasn't been the struggle for me. It's been where I'm at with the Lord today. Like, I feel like I. I just messed up all day today and I do anything right. I kept doing what I did not want to do and it got mad at me.

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Speaker 2
Is he displeased or I need to do some more good so that I'm back in his good graces, you know, which none of that is true. And so my point here, don't look to the law for your progress before God is is more of a subjective our feelings. We cannot look to the law for how we are doing with God today.

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Speaker 2
And we were dialoging about this earlier. But I was just thinking of if if we look at the law, how we're doing with the Lord, it's easy to take Jesus out of the equation in two different ways. And one is we we can just get really puffed up and prideful like I'm doing great. As far as God's commandments go, you know, I've got it down and the Pharisees kind of have that attitude and we can't be kidding ourselves.

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Speaker 2
Sometimes we have that attitude like, I'm doing pretty all right, And then but on the other end, and I think this is what's going on, Romans seven is we can get caught in that like a self-loathing, like wretched man that I am, but we just stay with wretched man, that I am right. And we don't move on to verse 25, which is, you know, praise God for Jesus, and we can't stay in that place, but we will if we just look to God's law, like I'm looking at the commandments and look at the imperatives in the New Testament and I'm feeling, yeah, I know you're still in Christ and he's still got you.

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Speaker 2
And that how your well or whatever is going on with your progress today, it can't affect your justification. And I think maybe that's a better way of putting it.

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Speaker 1
Yeah I totally agree. The way you put don't look to the law for your position before God I totally agree that that yeah, that is your justification, that is your standing, your righteousness that you have through Christ. That does not change based on on your performance. And I think we've we've talked through this a lot. But but the idea of your progress, I think we like to kind of verses like second Corinthians 13, verse five, Paul's saying, examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith, test yourselves.

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Speaker 1
And so I think I think we're kind of saying the same thing, and I think it's just kind of a bit of a nuanced conversation. But to to test ourselves, to examine ourselves, we have to have something objective to to measure ourselves against. And so I think that we should be checking our progress against the law. But but you're right.

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Speaker 1
The way we measure ourselves against the law should not lead to despair. For us, it should lead us to more to Christ.

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Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yes. Yeah. And and I think another important piece with that, too, is Romans eight is going to flesh this out in detail, but it Romans eight literally starts in was saying what the law could not do. God is done and through Jesus. And now we have the spirit. And the spirit empowers us to actually live out God's law, not because we're under the law, but because we're under grace.

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Speaker 2
And it's this kind of this beautiful example of when we were under the law before, we couldn't fulfill it. So God takes us out from underneath the law under grace, but he puts his spirit inside of us, and now we're fulfilling the law better than we ever have, even though we still struggle. We've got the spirit now. We did it before.

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Speaker 2
And that's why I mean, that's what we preach. We preach sermons directly from God's word and God's word convicts, because the Holy Spirit's ultimately the one convicting us. Yeah. And what's good about conviction is we have an opportunity for repentance and then just driving us back to Jesus and placing our faith in him and.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, and that's absolutely the distinction is, is the work of the spirit that, that that's why the law in this way can give us assurance, because we know that the spirit is working in our lives because because we have something to objectively measure ourselves against. And like, like Chris has been saying that it's sanctification is not about perfection, it's about progress and that.

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Speaker 1
Right. And so we need to be able to see that. We need to see the way that the spirit has worked in our lives again. But that doesn't change and change our position before God.

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Speaker 2
Absolutely. Yeah.

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Speaker 1
Yeah, that's that's good.

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Speaker 2
Absolutely.

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Speaker 1
One of your one of the other application points was look at where you're sewing. And I think this isn't somewhere that Steve went with the message. I kind of want to give you a chance to have a little broader audience with, with what you were talking about in this section. One of the things you said was there's a battle raging and it's it's not won or lost by heavy artillery, but but through small seeds, through sewn to the flesh or sewn to the spirit.

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Speaker 1
And so you would brought up Galatians six, But kind of just give us give us this section.

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Speaker 2
Yeah. I think it if, if you've been doing the reading plan, you've certainly seen passages from Galatians pop up throughout the weeks and Romans because Paul wrote Galatians before the letter to these churches in Galatia in this region, before he wrote to the Roman believers. But he's tackling a lot of the same issues and English in six. I'm just going to read it, he says.

00;24;30;21 - 00;24;58;05
Speaker 2
Do not be deceived. God is not mocked for whatever one sows that will he also reap. And you know, this is I don't want to assume everybody knows what this is. I remember when Jesus would talk about to the birds. So, you know, and I was like, I'm picturing someone like sewing, like cw sewing, like thread sowing seeds, planting seeds that are going to grow and we're going to have a harvest going to reap reap the harvest.

00;24;58;05 - 00;25;15;22
Speaker 2
And so whatever you so that that's what you're going to reap. And he says, verse eight for the one who sows to his own flesh will from the flesh reap corruption. But the one he says, the spirit will, from the spirit reap eternal life and let us not grow weary of doing good for a new season we will reap if we do not give up.

00;25;15;24 - 00;25;41;29
Speaker 2
And just as we're kind of stuck in this in between being saved but not fully saved, the struggle is going on. And we've got this exhortation from Paul also in Galatians six to pay attention to where we are sowing, where are we? Where are we planting? You know, are we are we giving ourselves to kingdom purposes and what God would have for us as his disciples, as his followers?

00;25;42;01 - 00;26;10;02
Speaker 2
Are we just kind of doing our own thing and loving the world and going through the motions? And yeah, I show the church sometimes or every week, but I'm not really present, you know, And I just think it's a it's this call that we constantly like. You read the verse earlier. We have to examine ourselves. We only examine ourselves like, am I really lending myself to what the spirit is doing in my life, or am I ignoring him?

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Speaker 1
Yeah. So in Galatians verse nine says, Don't grow weary of doing good right?

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Speaker 2
Yeah.

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Speaker 1
So what, what, what impact does that have on in what way do we grow weary of doing good.

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Speaker 2
Yeah, great question. So I think there's a lot of reasons, but I think one of the main reasons is we're not being patient in the process that things take a bit of time to grow and to flourish and to produce fruit. And if you put it, to use Paul's analogy, if you put a seed in the ground and you're hoping it's going to have fruit on it the next day, it's not going to germinate, come to the surface of the soil yet.

00;26;55;17 - 00;27;23;23
Speaker 2
But so we need to continue to do good, to to walk in the spirit and do what God's calling us to do in his word and don't get discouraged in the meantime, when we're not seeing things in the here and now like this dramatic change is taking place overnight or over the last several months, even one pastor I really appreciate this stuck out to me big time.

00;27;23;23 - 00;27;50;02
Speaker 2
He's he used to say, don't measure your spiritual progress or growth in years. Measure it in decades. And and at this point, you know, I was I remember when I heard that I was like 20 years old and I was like, kid, you only deal only two decades old now. I'm still over three decades old. But that was actually really encouraging because it's like you're going to get weary of doing good and continuing on the Christian faith.

00;27;50;02 - 00;28;06;23
Speaker 2
If you're just looking at the days and the weeks and even the year, you know, you might have a you might have a hard couple of years, but maybe if you look on the last decade, it's like, Oh man, Lord, I really have reaped a harvest and I'm so grateful I haven't given up.

00;28;06;25 - 00;28;41;19
Speaker 1
Yeah, for sure. Yeah, that's a that's a good way to look at that. Um, one thing that really stuck out to me in Steve's message, he said, You can measure how much you love Christ by how much you hate your sin. I think we've we've touched on that a little bit in previous episodes. The idea of not not kind of tying yourself to the negative aspect of sanctification where we just can't do this, we can't do this, we can't do this thing, but we replace it with with a positive love for something.

00;28;41;19 - 00;29;02;20
Speaker 1
And yeah, in this case, someone with Christ. And I think that that is such an important thing to, to realize, to talk about that, that we need to replace the negative with the positive and we need to redirect that into into love for Christ.

00;29;02;22 - 00;29;31;07
Speaker 2
I totally agree. And I think that's really well put because, yeah, to kind of see what you said in a different way were we need to fully our sin and run from it. But in our running away from sin we're running into the arms of Christ and it's like he is our ultimate love. It's not, oh I need to get away from this sin so that God's pleased with me.

00;29;31;07 - 00;29;49;02
Speaker 2
Like. And that's the end of the story. It's God is displeased with sin and but He literally sent in Jesus for the penalty of our sin and to be condemned in our place. And so when I'm turning away from sin, I'm not just turning away from sin to get a pat on the back, I'm turn away from sender on trying to Jesus my savior.

00;29;49;02 - 00;30;01;29
Speaker 1
Yeah, yeah. Well, that's all I have today, but that was helpful and appreciate you kind of walking us through this, this fun little Romans seven controversy. Little fun fact for today.

00;30;01;29 - 00;30;03;11
Speaker 2
So. Sure.

00;30;03;13 - 00;30;18;19
Speaker 1
Yeah. I appreciate just the work that you've been putting into to preaching. And I look forward to you doing it more next week. Like I said, we'll be back with Clay following up on the first Jonah's sermon. So thanks, Matt.

00;30;18;21 - 00;30;19;21
Speaker 2
Yeah, thank you.

00;30;19;24 - 00;30;22;09
Speaker 1
Thank you, everyone for listening and I'll talk to you next week.