Romans 7:15-25a (NRSV)
15 I do not understand my own actions. For I do
not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do
what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. 17 But in fact it
is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I
know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what
is right, but I cannot do it. 19 For I do not do the good I want,
but the evil I do not want is what I do. 20 Now if I do what I do
not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.
21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to
do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the
law of God in my inmost self, 23 but I see in my members another law
at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells
in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from
this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our
Lord!
Romans 7:15-25a is part of the second defense of the Law that Paul
offers. He is still wrestling with the significance of the coming of Christ for
those now baptized in Christ. In order to do so, he paints a picture of life
apart from the grace and faith we find in Christ. We need to be careful, for he
is not offering a phenomenological description of the human situation. He is
offering his understanding of the plight of humanity apart from the faith and
grace we have in Christ. His argument is that in light of the destiny of
humanity revealed in Christ, we learn of the plight of the present situation of
humanity. We would not know our plight were it not for this event of
revelation. The sin of Adam keeps repeating in every human life. The Law is
also a universal human experience of lifting up what is good, but it introduces
the plight of our failure to find ourselves truly reflected in what we do. [1] Adam makes sure that we remain enslaved in
sin. The Law does not have the power to reconcile us to God. As J.
Christiaan Beker puts it, the law "compels sin to show its true
face," the law "detects sin and makes me aware of my desperate
plight," and, sadly, "this knowledge is not therapeutic or preventive
but a knowledge-unto-death, which seals my doom."[2]
Turning from God, we turn toward self
and death.
The argument of the verses before is difficult to follow. If read in
public, most of us find it difficult to not get tongue-tied at some point. However,
let us see if we can make some sense of it. Paul describes the plight of
humanity as that of the divided self. He shows the conflict that many in the
ancient world noted, that of knowing what is the right thing to do and being
incapable of finding the moral capacity to do it. Socrates proposed that we do
not do what is good because of our ignorance of what is good. Paul is
suggesting that the problem humanity faces is deeper than that. When we know
what the good, we are not able to do it. Aristotle said that if Socrates were
right, then no one would be responsible for his or her actions. His point is that
people do evil because they choose it, even when they know what is good. Ovid
said, "I will to do good, but do evil." As Faust declared in the old
German legend, "Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast / And one is
striving to forsake its brother." Such persons can distinguish between
good and evil. People who cannot do that are sociopaths or may have some form
of mental illness. Their problem is the division between knowing what is right
and doing what is right. The plight of humanity may well be that evil and suffering
is natural to this world as it is, and that goodness has arrived somewhat
mysteriously. I hope that such goodness is spreading.[3]
Bob Dylan recalls his grandmother teaching him one of his most important
lessons. He was to be kind, because everyone you will meet is fighting a hard
battle.[4]
Such observations require some honesty. After all, we tend to our rationalize
actions. We tend to cover up how deep the human plight of humanity actually is.
Many in psychology have observed that we have a self-serving bias. We suffer from
giving ourselves a higher self-assessment than we deserve. We overestimate the
goodness of our actions. We suffer from a superiority complex. We will even
rationalize the behavior of others. We move quickly from the evil nature of an
act to what made the person do it to feeling sorry for the person that is the
perpetrator of evil who now becomes a victim of circumstances. We seem quite
unwilling to look at the evil that resides in the human heart.[5]
Of course, Paul does not have that problem. Paul highlights "the gulf between willing
and [non] achievement" as well as "the grip of sin as indwelling
power."[6] Corresponding to this is Beverly Gaventa's
observation that "Paul has in view here the religious person, the
responsible member of the human community, the one who wants to be a
contributing member of society. Despite every attempt to accomplish good for other
and for self, the efforts of the religious person come to nothing."[7]
The reason sin still dwells in us
is that we experience reiterating the turn away from spirit and toward flesh
that we find Adam did. The intensity of the struggle that Paul describes
reveals the character of the Law, sin, and the divided self that we are. Sin is
our turn from life and toward death. The sin of Adam, which human beings
re-create in their lives, shows its true character when confronted with the
Law. When we hear from the Law of God, which is spirit and life, the sin of
Adam continues to work its will in turning us away from the good intent of the
Law. He makes the point that he cannot recognize himself in his actions and
achievements because of the remnants of the choice that Adam made and that I have
repeated in my life.
Wording himself this way with the
use of “I” has created some confusion. Paul Meyer lays out a possible understanding of the
“I”.[8]
Meyer argues that the “I” is rhetorical rather than personal and refers to the
experience of the observant Jew who attends carefully to the requirements of
the law. It thus extends by way of rhetorical example Paul’s discussion of how
it is that the Law can be good in itself but ultimately not lead to life in the
experience of the law-observing Jew.
Paul acknowledges that sin lives
within him. He knows he is responsible for this divided self. He seems to have
two principals at war with each other in him. One principle acknowledges the
good and life-giving qualities of the Law of God and the other principle rebels
against it. In a sense, the sin of Adam repeated in each of us works with the
Law of God to create a divided and enslaved self. At this point, of course,
Paul will part with his Jewish heritage, which would have pointed to the Law as
the source of deliverance from this enslavement. Yet, we must also raise
another question. Paul is clearly pointing to the Jewish experience of the
Torah here. Yet, his argument seems to assume in a tacit way that every human
being has the struggle of the divided self. If so, the law must refer to a
universal principle, something like we would call religion, in order for his
argument to make sense. Religion introduces the principle of trying to redeem
the self through our effort. Our inability to satisfy the requirements of
religion disrupts our relationship with God in a profound way, for we now know
only slavery. Religion might even reveal what could be true of humanity, but
instead reveals the actuality of our estrangement from self, others, and God. We
hear the command, but do not perform it. We experience estrangement from our
true self.[9] In
some sense, then, if sin is a universal human experience, then the experience
of Law is as well. I might suggest that Torah is a specific instance of a
universal principle of law that God has given humanity. Once the Law arrives in
our lives, it places us in a prison, working with our sin to accomplish this. The
weakness of Law, and therefore of religion, is that it cannot overcome sin and
thus cannot give life. Law or religion reveals the divine purpose to move us
toward life and wholeness, but it only has the power to disclose the divided self
and the divided law. He experiences this battle as a form of slavery to the repetition
of the decision of Adam to turn from God, life, and righteousness and toward
self, sin, and death. He cannot free himself from this enslavement. His actions
condemn him to slavery.
To make the matter clear, let us
reflect with Paul on a startling image of our plight. Humanity is the
fellowship of a people under the influence of law and sin and therefore a body
of death. To be a body of death is to be a body of people without a future,
hopeless, and without redemption. The dignity of human destiny as shown in
Christ becomes a judgment upon the present plight of law and sin. Law and sin
reveal the plight of the human situation. Human conduct reveals the plight of
the human situation. Humanity is not just in want, suffering from oppression,
or frail. Our plight stands in contrast to the human destiny of human
fellowship with God.[10] Humanity
in this situation does not recognize who it is for sin finds success. We are
strangers to ourselves.[11] The Torah and every other form of Law or
religion are under the shadow of the coming of Christ, which ends the reign of
sin and law. One can no longer boast in the works of Torah, or of any other
law, whether Hindu yoga, Buddhist eight-fold path, Islam, or any secular
version (dialectical materialism). God gave Torah to show that humanity could
not keep it. Humanity will always experience its inadequacy in the presence of
Law. Instead of orienting humanity toward God, Torah (and every other law)
stirs up sin. This weakness of Torah, and therefore every form of law, can lead
one to recognize the insufficiency of human work and prepare one for the way of
faith. If Christ is the end of the Law, then Christ is the end of religion. We
are prisoners, even though it seemed to us as pure, upright, and unbroken. Our
acts of piety suggest as much. People cling to religion to bring life, but
religion must die.[12]
To bring us back to the point of
the section of Chapters 6-8, let us also be clear what the coming of Christ
means. The coming of Christ throws light on the actual plight of the human
situation. The only freedom humanity will find is in the grace it will find in
Jesus Christ. The only deliverance for humanity will come in fellowship with Jesus
Christ, who has come to release humanity from sin and death, reconstituting the
destiny of humanity as participating in the eschatological life of Christ.
[1] Jesus God and Man, 256.
[2] (Paul
the Apostle [Philadephia Fortress, 1980] 238-9).
[3] Scott Peck, Christianity Today (February
2005).
[4] Bob
Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One
[6] (Byrne,
Romans. Sacra Pagina 6. [Collegeville, Minn.: The Liturgical Press, 1996] 226).
[7] (Text
for Preaching: [Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1995] 393).
[8] In his
seminal article, “The worm at the core of the apple: Exegetical reflections on
Romans 7” (in The Conversation Continues: Studies in Paul and John in Honor of
J. Louis Martyn, ed. R.T. Fortna and B.R. Gaventa [Nashville: Abingdon, 1990],
62-84).
[9] Paul
Tillich, Morality and Beyond (1963),
52-53.
[10] Pannenberg,
Systematic Theology, Volume II, 178.
[11] Barth, Romans, 266.
[12] Barth, Romans, 235-39.
No comments:
Post a Comment