Paul Saves the Worst for Last

Our problem isn’t a divided self but a self enslaved to Another

The lectionary epistle for this coming Sunday is from the seventh chapter of Paul’s Letter to the Romans:

For we know that the law is spiritual; but I am of the flesh, sold into slavery under sin. I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. 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. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 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. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.

—7.14-25

The theologian Karl Barth said that preachers should approach the pulpit with the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other.

What Barth meant was that the world, as its described in the good news of the gospel, becomes clearer to see when you find it confirmed by and corroborated in the pages of your newspaper. The connection between the scriptures and the news couldn’t be clearer than with this passage from Paul’s epistle. Like original sin, Paul’s lament, over failing to do the good that he wills to do and failing to avoid the evil that he wills not to commit, is one of the few empirically verifiable doctrines in the Bible.

If the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans was a play instead of an epistle, if it was a script with a Dramatis Personae at the beginning, then it would be obvious even before you read it that in Romans, Sin has a starring role.