I preached this sermon on July 5, 2026, at Christ Presbyterian Church in Milford, Ohio.
The lectionary text is Romans 7:15-25a
Every one of us has had that moment.
You lose your temper, and the words are out before you can stop them. You give in to a temptation you thought you’d conquered years ago. You waste time on things that don’t matter. You promise yourself, “Tomorrow will be different.” Then tomorrow comes…and it isn’t.
You fight the same temptation.
You fall into the same habit.
You replay the same regret.
And somewhere inside, a quiet voice asks, “Why do I keep doing the very thing I don’t want to do?”
If you’ve ever asked that question, you’re in good company. The Apostle Paul asked exactly the same thing.
Now, if Hollywood were telling Paul’s story, there would probably be a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other. Saturday morning cartoons loved that image. Tom and Jerry had it. Papa Smurf had it. Fred Flintstone had it. Even Homer Simpson had his own version.
It’s a funny picture, but it captures a serious truth. There is a battle taking place inside every human heart. Romans 7 is Paul’s honest confession that even an apostle knows that battle against sin, against that which we do not want to do.
But Paul isn’t simply describing a struggle. He’s explaining why he recognizes it so clearly. To understand that, we have to remember who Paul was before he met Christ.
He had been a Jew all his life until his “Road to Damascus” conversion to Christianity. He was a Pharisee, and as a Pharisee, he knew the Law of Moses inside and out. He knew the Law of Moses as written in the Torah, 613 commandments to follow, 613 commandments to break.
Paul first defends and vindicates the Law. He asks earlier in Romans 7:7, What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, “You shall not covet.” The Law is not sin; it simply revealed sin, and Paul defends it.
The Law was never the problem. The Law was a mirror. Mirrors don’t create dirt on your face; they simply reveal what’s already there. The Law reveals sin, but it cannot remove it.
The old rock song says, “Sign, sign, everywhere a sign. Do this, don’t do that…”
That’s almost what living under the Law could feel like. Command after command. Rule after rule. Yet Paul insists the signs weren’t the problem. The signs simply pointed out where we’d already gone wrong.
Once the Law has exposed the dirt with the mirror, Paul asks the obvious question: If the Law shows us our sin so clearly, why can’t we simply stop sinning? His answer is painfully honest.
Paul is saying that sin is part of the human condition. Not that the person always does wrong and never does right, but Paul knows that humans are going to human. And he’s as human as anybody, he’s quick to point out.
Paul is also giving himself, and us, grace when he says that we aren’t the ones doing evil, but rather the sin that lives in him, in us, is doing evil. Paul is redundant in this passage; he repeats this concept word for word in verses 17 and 20. Did you catch that? He says, twice, “It is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me.” He is emphasizing that sin is what needs to be dealt with, and thus he gives us a glimpse of the solution for dealing with it.
Scholars have debated exactly who Paul means when he keeps saying “I” in the first person. Is he speaking primarily about himself? Is he speaking as a representative of Israel? Is he describing every Christian or Christian Jew?
The answer, in one sense, doesn’t change the message. Paul’s experience becomes our experience. Every Christian recognizes this struggle. And that shared struggle points us to Paul’s larger argument. The problem isn’t God’s Law. The problem is that the Law cannot change the human heart.
And this is the weakness of the Law of Moses that Paul is trying to point out. The Law was holy, just, and good, but it did not offer true deliverance. The Law isn’t wrong, there’s something wrong with us, as Paul writes. We are in a state and condition of sin. If we were to try to follow each of the 613 commandments in the Law of Moses, the sin in us would cause us to fail.
Sam Sayre, my driver’s ed instructor in high school, taught us how to drive. He taught us which laws of the road were resolute, which ones were less so. For instance, we weren’t to go a single MPH over 20 in an active school zone. He might have failed us. I still adhere so carefully to it. If you had to accelerate over the speed limit to avoid blind spots or other hazards, you were praised. But some Pharisee state trooper would see that as a violation. The Apostle Paul is suggesting grace and redemption, moving away from the strict Law of Moses.
That temptation to rely on ourselves isn’t unique to first-century Jews. It’s deeply woven into our own culture as well.
On this Independence Day weekend, we celebrate freedom. Americans love freedom. We celebrate self-reliance, independence, pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps.
Those are admirable qualities in many parts of life. But they are disastrous when it comes to salvation.
The Christian life is never lived by sheer determination.
You cannot grit your teeth into holiness.
You cannot willpower your way into righteousness.
You cannot defeat sin simply by trying harder.
Romans 7 exposes the weakness of self-reliance.
God’s answer is not “Try harder.” God’s answer is “Trust deeper.”
Think about the heroes of Scripture:
· David defeated Goliath—but later couldn’t defeat his own lust.
· Moses confronted Pharaoh—but couldn’t control his temper.
· Peter boldly confessed Jesus as the Messiah—then denied Him around a campfire.
· Paul planted churches across the Roman Empire—yet still confessed, “I do not do the good I want.”
Scripture never hides the failures of God’s people because Scripture is telling the truth about all of us. But God never exposes our sin simply to leave us in despair. Whenever Scripture reveals our need, it also points us toward God’s answer. Scripture tells the truth about us.
Since the Law doesn’t offer deliverance, since sin is always present to condemn us, how do we be free from sin? Or are we ever free from sin? Do we need to be? How are we sanctified to eternal life with God? Paul wrote in the prior chapter of the emancipating truth, the remedy for the plight of us sinners. That free gift from God: that Christ died already for our sins. Death has no hold on him, and if we are baptized in Christ, we died with Christ and we also live with him. He died for our sins. That’s why Christians don’t live in denial about sin. We live in confidence about our Savior.
Paul finally reaches the breaking point in verse 24. “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”
Notice he doesn’t ask, “What will rescue me?” He asks,“Who?”
The answer is not another law. The answer is not more discipline. The answer is not trying harder.
The answer is a person. He ends with, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Next week Paul opens Romans 8 with one of the greatest promises in all of Scripture:
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
The struggle is real, for Paul and for us. The battle continues. Sin still wages war within us. But sin does not get the last word – Christ does.
We are not saved because we finally conquered sin. We are saved because Jesus conquered sin for us.
One day, the struggle that fills Romans 7 will finally give way to the victory promised in Romans 8.
One day, faith will become sight. Temptation will be no more.
Sin will lose its grip forever.
And we will stand complete in Christ.
Until that day, we do not trust our own strength.
We trust the grace of our Savior and the power of the Holy Spirit.
To the Lord our God, Alpha and Omega, beginning and end,
be all glory and honor forever.
