The Worst Lie About Grace | Why the Torah Wasn't Replaced | Romans 7:4–25

We are going to walk our way very thoughtfully through Romans chapter 7 which many theologians consider as perhaps the most important chapter in the entire New Testament as pertains to Christian doctrines. So let's continue with Romans chapter 7 by having a brief review of two significant points that we discussed last time. First of all, have your Bibles open, please. Take a look. The opening three verses of chapter se of chapter 7 of Romans. The opening three verses appear to be Paul paraphrasing a Levitical law. In other words, one of the laws of Moses from the biblical Torah about why it is acceptable to God for a widow to remarry. Now, he will use this paraphrase as a loose illustration to make a point about what he means when he says believers have died to the law. But upon closer examination, we discovered that there exists no such law regarding widows within the Torah, the law of Moses. There is no specific direct commandment that allows a widow to remarry other than in the case of a widow who has not given birth to a son. In that case, then the laws of lever marriage apply. And this law reflects the family requirement that when a man dies without his wife having produced a son as an heir for him, the brother of the deceased man is to marry the widow for the primary purpose of of him producing a son with her. However, that son would be seen spiritually and legally as actually belonging to the deceased man. The son then allows the deceased man's bloodline to continue along with his living essence. Now, of course, Paul's example that you're looking at, I hope in no way contemplates the mar the leverate marriage circumstance. And in fact, the Torah makes it an act of adultery should a widow remarry. And thus, in principle, it prohibits such a thing. The penalty for adultery is death by stoning. So what source is Paul referring to as the law about widows being able to remarry? It is Jewish law. It's tradition. It's hol. It is something that most Pharisees would have supported. Paul was a self-professed Pharisee, but the Sadducees, the priests, likely would not have supported it. Not only is this an important distinction, but it also reveals Paul's attitude towards Holah. Now, while he would not have supported all Holica, locks, stock, and barrel, he obviously supported Jewish law in general, provided to his way of thinking. It did not refute the Torah or Christ or or Paul's messianic theology. But it also signals that we have to be cautious when reading Paul not to assume that because he purports something to be law that he means the law of Moses. Further, English translations tend to obscure one of the grammatical indicators that tells us which of these four different kinds of law that we discussed last time that Paul is referring to. Because often Bible translators will insert the word the t the before the word law producing the term the law. The law is a standard Jewish abbreviation for the law of Moses. However, in the Greek manuscripts of the New Testament, the definite article 'the' is not there. So in this instance of verses 1-3 of chapter Romans chapter 7 the reference is not to the law but just simply to law and as we learned in this case the term law means Jewish law holah. Now the second important point is this. We have to examine the term died to the law quite carefully. Indeed in this case the definite article the is present in the Greek manuscript. So the term the law the law of Moses certainly seems to be Paul's meaning. Thus, to paraphrase what he said, thus died to the law of Moses is is the meaning. Died to the law of Moses. That's the intended sense of it. Now, this usually is taken to mean that Christians are no longer beholden to the Torah. And so, it just goes to prove that the law is dead. However, when we back away for a moment, we notice something important. Who or what died in this passage? Did Paul say the law died to the believer? No. It is the believer who died. And since the penalty for violating a law of Moses for sinning is God's wrath and the sinner's death, then Paul is explaining that through the death of Christ on the cross, worshippers who trust in Yeshua and identify in baptism with him, then we have died right along with him. Thus it is that the believer is who has a change of status. We get a change of status. The law doesn't get a change of status. It's believers. By symbolically dying, we have paid the penalty that the law requires of us for our sins. So Paul can say, "Well, then we've already died to it. We've died to the law. And since all humans are destined to die only once, well then we owe no further penalty for our sins. Now, it's become quite muddled in Christianity anymore to even define what a sin is. Most often, it's this sin is doing anything God doesn't want me to do. However, that thought is usually tempered with the belief that what is sin for me is not necessarily sin for you and vice versa. Sin is now individualistic. It's been customized believer by believer and that customized definition is then delivered to us each by the Holy Spirit. Thus, unless God specifically tells you that such a sin such uh that such and such is a sin, just like he did with Adam regarding eating the forbidden fruit, then nothing for you is sin. Sin no longer has a universal standard. And since you can't possibly know what God told me I'm not to do or even to do, you can't judge me when I do something that to you was wrong cuz maybe God didn't tell me I shouldn't do that. That's the doctrine, folks. That's how it works today. I mean, I was going to say it straight away. That is just the worst sort of man-made doctrine. It defies the Bible, including the New Testament. One authoritative person who defines sin, I think, the clearest is the Apostle John. Think he's pretty good authority. I'll take his word for it. I'm going to quote him. I'm even going to quote him using the King James version since it's not only well accepted, but it also eliminates this the dynamic translation that the complete Jewish Bible prefers to use. He says in 1 John 3:4, "Whosoever committh sin transgresseth also the law, for sin is transgression of the law." Pretty plain. Sin is transgression of the law, the law of Moses. Now that is the direct biblical New Testament definition of sin as pronounced by the Apostle John. Sin is not whatever we choose to make it. Neither the church nor a single believer can unilaterally decide that there is no longer a universal standard for sin or that every individual carries his or her own truth. and thus is required to obey only their own private set of divine rules. Those who adhere to this erroneous doctrine then accuse those who obey any written biblical law of committing something called legalism. But John says that when you or I violate one of the commandments of the law of Moses, that is precisely what sin is. True, Christ has paid the price for our sin. But just as Paul has already covered a couple of times now, does that mean we just go right on sinning, right on breaking the law? because there's just plenty of grace available so that we don't pay the consequences of our sinning. What did Paul say to that? Heaven forbid. I mean, wake up believers truly. I mean, our ambivalence, our long slumber is over. Just as before you first believed, the moment you heard the gospel of Christ, I'm sorry, but any excuse you may have had before God to plead ignorance and thus obtain mercy because of it, that evaporated. You have now been taught. You've been shown it in the holy scriptures that even the direct words of the savior himself in Matthew 5 says that the law is anything but dead and gone and he fully expects all of his followers to obey it. There is no more excuse. You know sin has a standard standard is the law of Moses and it is not a denominational decision. It's not our personal standard that that God uses. It's not the standard that any particular denomination decides upon. Doesn't matter. And just as Christ pointed out, while it is not obedience to the law, but rather our trust in his faithfulness that brings us a quiddle before the father. Even so, our level of obedience to the law of Moses is going to be the determining factor for the status we will hold for an eternity in the kingdom of heaven. You want to live in eternity as the least before God, so be it. If you want to live in eternity as the least be as the least before God, that's up to you. But you know, if you want to be more than that, here's what you have to do. Obey him. If you keep on denying the ongoing validity of the law and keep on sinning, as a result, it's deliberate because you know better. You have made the decision in your free will to be disobedient. It's conscious. It's intentional. You have decided to follow your comfortable ways. not God's ways because you like your ways more than God's ways. You see them as far easier, maybe even superior to God's ways. The Bible has a label for that sort of attitude. It's called rebellion. And men, when you lead your family that way, you take on further responsibility. Let's reread a good portion of Romans chapter 7. Open your Bibles again to open uh Romans chapter 7. We're going to start reading at verse 4. Verse four. If you have a complete Jewish Bible, it is page 1409. Page 1409. Thus, my brothers, you have been made dead with regard to the Torah through the Messiah's body, so that you may belong to someone else, namely the one who's been raised from the dead, in order for us to bear fruit for God. For when we were living according to our old nature, the passions connected with sins worked through the Torah in our various parts with the result that we bore fruit for death. >> [clears throat] >> But now we've been released from this aspect of the Torah because we have died to that which had us in its clutches. So that we are serving in the new way provided by the spirit, not in the old way of outwardly following the letter of the law. Therefore, what are we to say? Is the Torah sinful? Heaven forbid. Rather, the function of the Torah was that without it, I would not have known what sin is. For example, I I would not have become conscious of what greed is if the Torah had not said, "Thou shalt not covet." But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, worked in me all kinds of evil desires. For apart from Torah, sin is dead. I was once alive outside the frame framework of Torah. But when the commandment really encountered me, sin sprang to life and I died. The commandment that was intended to bring me life was found to be bringing me death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment deceived me. And through the commandment, sin killed me. So the Torah is holy. That is, the commandment is holy, just, and good. Then did something good become the source of death? Heaven forbid. It was sin working death in me through something good, so that sin might be clearly exposed as sin. So that sin through the commandment might come to be experienced as sinful beyond measure. For we know that the Torah is of the spirit. But as for me, I'm bound to the old nature, sold to sin as a slave. I don't understand my own behavior. I don't do what I want to do. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. Now, if I'm doing what I don't want to do, I'm agreeing that the Torah is good. For now, it's no longer the real me doing it, but the sin housed inside of me. For I know that there's nothing good housed inside of me, that is inside my old nature. I can want what's good, but I can't do it. For I don't do the good I want. Instead, the evil I don't want is what I do. But if I'm doing what the real me doesn't want, it's no longer the real me, but it but doing it but the sin housed inside of me. So I find it to be the rule, a kind of perverse Torah that although I want to do what is good, evil's right there with me. For in my inner self, I completely agree with God's Torah. But in my various parts, I see a different Torah. One that battles with the Torah in my mind. And it makes me a prisoner of sins Torah which is operating in my various parts. Oh, what a miserable creature I am. Who's going to rescue me from this body that's bound for death? Thanks be to God, he will. Through Yeshua, the Messiah, our Lord. Verse six makes the case that a very important prophecy has been fulfilled. Does your Bible say that? No, it doesn't, does it? But indeed, that is what Paul is alluding to. He says, "We've been released or we've been delivered from the law and thus we are no longer held captive because we've died to it." Again, notice who or what died. Did the law die? No. Did we die? Yes. Thus, our death has released us. But released us from what? from the need to be obedient to God's commandments. Paul Paul has said time and again to this misunderstanding, "Heaven forbid." That's not what I mean. Rather, we have been released from the aspect of the law that the te Old Testament sometimes calls the curse of the law. Now the curse of the law is not an adjective that characterizes the law. And it is a not the law itself. Rather, the law consists, you'll learn this when we study the Torah, of two fundamental parts. Blessings for obedience, curses for disobedience. The curse of the law is death. So are we released from the blessings of the law? Well, of course not. Rather, we are released from the curses of the law, which is death. Or as Paul says to begin Romans chapter 8, therefore there is no longer condemnation awaiting those who are in union with the Messiah Yeshua. Curses, condemnation, death. These are all biblical equivalents for the divine consequence of our sins. Well, back to verse six. Perhaps the most important part of this verse are the words that say that now we are able to operate in the spirit instead of the letter of the law. This is the prophecy I'm talking about. This is the prophecy that's been fulfilled. And it's been fulfilled from Jeremiah 31:es 30 through 32. And it goes like this here. The days are coming, says Adoni, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their fathers on the day I took them by their hand and brought them out of the land of Egypt. Because they, for their part, violated my covenant, even though I, for my part, was a husband to them, says Adonai. For this is the covenant I'll make with the house of Israel after those days, says Adonai. I'll put my Torah within them. I'll write it on their hearts. I'll be their God. They will be my people. The New Testament holds the spirit and the letter in antithesis to one another. That is one is the opposite of the other. The spirit of the law means that the what what the law intends for us to understand as God's as the God principle that it's demonstrating. And from that understanding, then we're to act rightly. The letter of the law means to act upon the law mechanically, rigidly, technically by looking only at its instructions, but disregarding the underlying God principles that are behind those words. But it also means that when the law is applied without the Holy Spirit directing our thoughts and our actions, it can be wrongly applied. However, it is important to remember [clears throat] that acting in the spirit of the law doesn't do away with the written law of Moses anymore than Jeremiah's prophecy of putting the law on our hearts means that the Holy Spirit has created and put an entirely new and different even opposite divine instruction within us. It's not meant that God replaced an old and failed law with something new and better. Yeshua in his sermon in the mount spoke ex uh extensively about the spirit of the law as opposed to the letter. And frankly, if you look closely, the spirit of the law is far more demanding than the letter of the law. Far more. I mean, give you an example. He says in Matthew 5 that the letter of the law says do not murder. But the spirit of the law says that the divine intent of the law prohibiting murder means you can't even be angry with your brother. That's a little harder, isn't it? And just as Yeshua felt the need to pause in his famous sermon and then make it clear that nothing he was saying should be taken as as him suggesting that he has abolished or changed the law of Moses. So now in Romans 7, Paul pauses and he feels the need to say in verse 7, therefore what are we to say? that the Torah is sinful. Well, heaven forbid. Rather, the function of the Torah was that without it, I would not have known what sin is. For example, I would not have become conscious of what greed is if the Torah had not said, "Thou shalt not covet." See, here's the thing. Does not much of modern-day Christianity advocate or at least heavily imply that for believers, the law of Moses has become sin for us. That for us to go back to the law, as it's often slanderously put, is somehow an affront to God because of what Yeshua has done for us. By the way, as an aside, I'll bet many of you have no been have no doubt been asked by well-meaning believers, why would I want to go back to the law? I've been asked that 500 times. I finally figured out a response. Okay, tell me, what was it like when you were living under the law? Please tell me. Usually get blank stairs. See, their inference is that non-believers or perhaps new believers had been living their lives under the law of Moses, right? I mean, the vast majority of non-believers and even new believers have no idea what the law of Moses is. probably had never even heard of it. As I've mentioned many times when I when I taught the Torah, the law of Moses was only ever for the redeemed. First, Israel was redeemed from Egypt. Then a few weeks later, they received the law. That's the pattern. The law is only for the redeemed. It's only for believers and we usually have no knowledge of it or any awareness of its important to us importance to us until after we're redeemed. Thank you for that. So, are we to think that what God described as goodness, life, and protection for Israel, that's what he called the Torah, was actually in practice a defective covenant and ultimately a failure that all it led to was sin. So, it had to be replaced. with a much better brand new one with more bells and whistles. I mean, listen to what the Lord told Moses and Israel about the Torah in Deuteronomy 30. You don't have to get your Bible out, but this is going to be taken from uh Deuteronomy 30:10-20. You don't have to turn there. However, all this will happen only if you pay attention to what Adaniah your God says. so that you obey his mitzvot, his commandments and his regulations which are written in the book of the Torah. If you turn to Adonai, your God with all your heart, with all your being. For this commandment which I'm giving you today is too hard for you. It's not beyond your reach. It isn't up in the sky so that you need to ask who's going to go up into the sky for us and bring it to us and and make us hear it so we can obey it. Likewise, it it's not beyond the sea. So that you need to ask, well, who's going to cross the sea for us and bring it to us and make us hear it so we can obey it? On the contrary, the word is very close to you in your mouth, even in your heart. Therefore, you can do it. Look, I'm presenting you today with on the one hand life and good. on the other hand, death and evil. And that I am ordering you today to love Adonai your God, to follow his ways, to obey his commandments, regulations, and rulings. For if you do, you will live, and you will increase your numbers, and Adonai your God will bless you in the land you are entering in order to take possession of it. But if your heart turns away, if you refuse to listen, if you're drawn away to prostrate yourselves before other gods and serve them, I am announcing to you today, you will certainly perish. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess. I call on heaven and earth to witness against you today that I have presented you with life and death. the blessing and the curse. Therefore, choose life so that you will live you and your descendants loving Adonai your God, paying attention to what he says. Cling to him for that's the purpose of your life. On this depends the length of time you'll live in the land war he would give to your ancestors. Abraham, its Yakov. Here's the question we have to ask ourselves. Did the Lord actually pull the most cosmically monumental bait and switch operation in history upon mankind by first giving Israel the law of Moses saying that this government covenant means blessing and life for you demanding that it's obeyed but then later retracting it all is defective and overall just a bad idea. Was this entire thing perhaps a deception? Just a ruse? Because as I've said before, and I say this in all seriousness to you, if God would do that, then why would I believe in the long-term efficacy of any covenant he would ever make? Why wouldn't he offer us all this forgiveness and mercy through Christ, but then one day simply decide it wasn't working out all that well, abolish it and create something else entirely? Or even more, tell us that to continue since he said this now to trust in Yeshua is actually foolishness. It's sin for us because he's come up with an even newer and better covenant. This is what we're asked to accept about the covenant of Moses and Abraham. And I deny it and I condemn it in the strongest possible way. But I'm also ashamed to admit that I believed it till a little over 20 years ago. But even more, do we find anything in this statement in Deuteronomy or anywhere else in the Torah that the entire purpose of the Torah is merely to show us what sin is? No, we do not. Thus, when Paul says at the end of verse 7 that without the law, he wouldn't have known what sin is, he's only doing what Paul regularly does as his teaching and writing style. He will highlight a certain aspect of a much larger theological matter in order to make a point. He is in no way indicating that the several other aspects of the pertinent theological principle don't exist or they don't matter. So for believers to ever imagine that Paul is saying that the single and only purpose for the Torah, the law to exist was for God to show humans what sin is, well that completely defies what the Torah tells us about itself. In verse 8, Paul Paul says that apart from the law, sin is dead. This goes along with his declaration in verse 7 that the Torah tells us what sin is. The point of the next three verses is to say that while on the one hand, the law is certainly not sin. On the other hand, it can't be denied that the law has been exploited by sin for its own wicked purposes. Then he goes on to explain something he also said earlier that when God makes a law as humans, our mere knowledge of that law causes our eco evil inclinations to just kick into overdrive. So what do we to think that Paul is saying now about the relationship between laws and sin? Is it truly an issue of direct cause and effect? Now much of Christianity says that Paul's solution to the problem is just don't have any laws. I mean you can't get a speeding ticket if there's no speed limits. You can't go to jail for robbing a bank if there's no law against robbing banks. So if we apply this mindset, we think Paul's saying to civil society, we find that God's solution to the crime problem is really easy. Get rid of all the laws. Just let people do whatever they want. No laws, no crime, no criminals. Easy. Frankly, what is usually proposed is Paul's solution is absurd. Just get rid of all of God's divine laws. Sinning now becomes impossible. Paul then explores the reality that the same Torah that God meant to bring life also brings death. This fits exactly with what we just read in Deuteronomy chapter 30. God means for the Torah to bring life and security to his worshippers, blessings. However, that only happens when one is obedient to God's laws. Disobedience to the law brings death and chaos with it, or as the Torah calls it, curses. So because people still allow their evil inclinations to remain as their masters, the law of Moses causes curses upon them in the sense that there is a deadly consequence for breaking God's laws. Yet as he says in verse 12, Paul says that doesn't mean the Torah is defective. Rather says Paul, so the Torah is holy. That is the commandment is holy, just and good. Where's the defect? Let me paraphrase that. The law itself as a covenant and as a justice system is just and good. So the problem that the death of Christ remedies is not to repair the Torah and it's not to repeal it because it's already holy and just. The problem that solved by Christ's death is that a divine pardon is made available for the many that have disobeyed the holy commandments of the Torah. And thus we deserve God's wrath which amounts to curses and death. That's the problem that Christ solved on the cross. After all of this is explored. Now Paul in typical rabbitical fashion has his straw man issue a ruling which Paul of course strongly disagrees with. And the straw man says, "Well, then I guess from all you have said, the law that was some that was good somehow over time has instead become a source of corruption and death." To which Rabbi Paul responds, "Heaven forbid." No way, Jose. Rather, the Torah remains, he says, good and pure. It is only that because my disobedience to what is good clearly has exposed that my behaviors were wrong and my nature was bad well beyond what I ever imagined it all might be. So I finally realized that part of me as a believer, as a possessor of the Holy Spirit, part of me was still bound to my slave master, my evil inclination. And folks, this is one of those theological principles that is so very hard for us to hear. At the same time, we all inherently know it's true. It is this. As believers, we are currently hanging kind of suspended somewhere between Christ's death and his resurrection. That is we have a certain unity in Christ in regards to his death and to his burial. Paul has spent much time on this aspect of our identity in Christ on his death and on his burial. But in reality, we do not yet share or identify in the same way with his resurrection. That is Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection. He arose and then after some time on earth he ascended to heaven in a glorified body completely free from whatever part of him represented his old nature and his vulnerable flesh. We have not yet followed suit. We have not yet none of us here have been resurrected into glorified bodies. This ain't very glorified. We still have these same corrupt frail bodies and so remnants of our former nature complete with evil evil inclinations that still remains in us. We are living ironies. We are changed but not entirely. We are holy before God but not every aspect of us is actually holy. We live with God's spirit in us. Yet our evil inclinations still operate and bed us as well. We know what sin is. We know how destructive it is to our relationship with God and at times to our fellow humans. Sometimes we do it anyway. So as Paul puts it in verse 17, the real me, that part of me that is the new nature that the Holy Spirit has given to me, resides side by side with my old sin nature that's still housed inside of me. So there's this constant tug of war going on. Sometimes the new me wins, sometimes the old me prevails. That's our condition. Now what is this probably is not good news for us to hear. At least it explains why we at times behave the way we do. We have the kind of thoughts we have that by the way we're very glad nobody else knows about. We can also be comforted by knowing that the Apostle Paul openly admits that he too is plagued by this uncomfortable duality in his own life. So we probably shouldn't feel too bad about it for ourselves. I call this condition spiritual schizophrenia. It indeed is partially the result of our being suspended between our own death in Yeshua that has already happened and our resurrection into new and glorified bodies which has not yet happened. Although the English masks it, we find the Greek word nomos appear in these last few verses a number of times and the uses can denote various things. Remember that the word nomos is typically rendered into English as law. Law. Usually Bible translators want us to accept that all uses of the word nomos law refer to the Old Testament law Moses. But that's not the case. And verse 21 gives us yet another use of the word law. Take a look at it. Take a look at verse 21. It makes law mean a kind of general non-specific law that Paul is using more as a metaphor than real. You know, it would be kind of like a dad who's had it with the kids today and he says, "I'm laying down the law in this house." He means it like that. He doesn't mean there's any specific civil law or formal biblical law. probably not even a quotable house rule. He just means he's going to require his kids to do what he says and if they don't there's going to be consequences. So Paul's informal law is that whenever he tries to do what's good in Jewish context, this means to let the master of his good inclination rule him, the influence of his evil inclination is right there to cause trouble. Well, in verses 22 and 23, Paul speaks of his inner self versus his other parts. Now his inner self is his regenerated mind. It is that spiritual part of him that is there therefore directly affected by God's holy spirit that dwells within him. And this part of him oh it naturally loves the Torah. It completely agrees with God's law. But let's pause for a second. I'm going to meddle for a moment. Do you love God's law or do you hate it? Do you agree with God's Torah? Or do you disagree with it? Do you seek to know and to do God's law or do you try to find ways to avoid it? Keep it separate from your life. See, Paul uses the inner self that loves and agrees with God's Torah over and against the other parts of his body that operate based on sin's law. He is once again paraphrasing the standard doctrine of Judaism of the first century AD that is called the doctrine of two masters. God's law is one master. Sin's law is the other master. It's an opposing master. But always with Paul, it is the law of Moses that is equated to God's laws and also with the good inclination. Paul continues to make the case that the hallmark of a true believer is that God's laws are what he or she goes by and strives to be obedient to. When we fail, we are in reality being obedient to sin's law. I realize that so much of what we've talked about in the book of Romans is the law of Moses. You know why? Because co Paul constantly brings it up, weaving it into his his letter as a central feature. But it's also for the same reason that most of my time for seed of Abraham Torah class has been spent creating and teaching Bible lessons on the Old Testament. It's because the Old Testament and the law of Moses so vital for Christian spiritual health as a guide for Christian living has been neglected. not thrown into the dust bin is irrelevant. Mostly due to man-made doctrines beginning with the earliest gentile controlled church that was openly anti-Jewish. The Old Testament and the law are something quite unfamiliar, foreign sounding, materially misunderstood by the church in general. So, a great deal of times needed to for me to explain what it is, what it isn't, where it fits, how to apply its principles, to make clear a proposition that most Christians have been told we must avoid. that obedience to the covenant of Moses and our direct connection to the covenant of Abraham as spiritual seed of Abraham. Those are the missing links to our faith. It is the the these things are the Rosetta Stone that help us to properly understand Yeshua and the New Testament. This is what leads us to rekindle our brotherhood with Israel and the Jewish people. And these are the things that enables us to know God as he truly is at least as much as a human's capable of knowing him. Now verse 24 has I love that verse. It's almost a primal scream from Paul. But you know keep in mind it comes from a righteous man. Paul who realizes his predicament. See, some of his predicament has already been solved m by Messiah. He has been granted righteousness. He has been given eternal life with God. But the rest of his predicament, well, that's a work in progress as it is for us all. There's no easy solutions. Part of him pays attention to his evil master. Part of him pays attention to his good master. This leads him to cry out and that primal scream, "Oh, what a miserable creature I am." Many Bible commentators, ancient and modern, by the way, are deeply troubled by what they read here. Some go far as to go so far as to allege this has to be an addition by a person who cannot possibly be a believer. I mean after all how can a Christian be miserable? How can a Christian have internal conflicts? How can a Christian so readily admit that even after being saved, there are parts of him that are still controlled by sin? Surely this can't be a man regenerated by the work of Messiah Yeshua. But to think this way, I believe, betrays an allegation that I have made numerous times. Too often, Bible commentators begin with a settled doctrine and then they work backwards from it to make the scripture fit it. I mean, if only they would begin by reading read uh reading and studying the Old Testament. If only they would see the struggles and failures of faith and some of our greatest Bible heroes. And yet how much God loved them, held them up even as righteous. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Judah the son of Jacob, King David. that murderer, that adulterer, one so loved God. See, if these great patriarchs can fail and can have never ending internal battles between good and evil, well, folks, so can we. And we do. And the ones I mentioned didn't have the benefit of Yeshua Hamashiach and the Holy Spirit indwelling them. But we do. I'm not sure that outside of Yeshua himself there is a stronger, bolder figure in the Bible than Paul. And yet he's honest enough to admit that while we like to speak of Jesus's finished work on the cross, in fact, his work is not finished. And even the effects of the marvelous things that he's already done have not fully taken hold. This is why I have urged you to listen and to take heart to Paul's words in Romans when he does not demand that somehow we must muster up more faith from the pit of our souls no matter the circumstance. A greater or larger faith in us is not the issue. Rather, we must have and maintain an an unshakable trust in the perfect faithfulness of Yeshua. We must determine to remain obedient to God, even knowing ahead of a time. We won't always do that. This is why Paul ends chapter 7 by asking the rhetorical question, who's going to rescue me from this body bound for death? And with great relief and thanksgiving, he cry he he cries out. Yeshua, our Lord, will see. This isn't the cry of a seeker. This is not the cry of a man who's kind of trying to walk a line between belief and unbelief. This is the cry of a man who knows God. This is the cry of a man who well understands where the human race currently stands. This is the cry we should all utter when we stumble and we wonder how God could still love us after everything he's done for us. Well, Paul sums up his present line of thought in verse 25 with a truth that represents the condition of every believer, no matter how together, how pious, how nearly perfect that believer just might appear. It is that in his mind, meaning his inner self, in his inner self, because he knows what he knows to be true, he has given himself over as a slave to his new master, God's law. Yet in his sin nature that is still there, still not fully conquered, other parts of him are going to follow sin's law. And so this righteous man is going to stumble as we all will. Next week we'll start Romans chapter 8. >> For more teachings of real Bible study and to rediscover God's word with Tom Bradford, visit Torah class today on the web, streaming TV, or download the Torah class mobile app.