That is what the struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans means. That
is a struggle under law, the picture of a man who has been brought
under condemnation by the law. The law is a great mirror let down from
heaven in which a man may see himself as he is. That is why the law
brings condemnation and death. It is a curse,――not because the law is
not holy, but because it convicts the man of his unholiness. Law does
this in the New Testament as well as the Old, and with infinitely more
searching terribleness because of the high spiritual interpretation of
the inner meaning of the outward commands. The law of God has done its
work in a Christian when he has seen that it is impossible for him to
be good according to God’s standard.
Not all have seen this. Dr. Scofield tells of a gentleman who came to
him at the close of a talk on how a Christian might get out of the
struggle of the seventh chapter of Romans into the victory of the
eighth chapter, and asked him this: “Doctor, what was the trouble with
Paul anyway? Why did he find it so hard to be good? I don’t find it
very hard to be good.”
“What do you mean by being good?” the preacher asked.
“What every one means――living a clean life, being honest, paying your
debts, treating people right, and if your neighbor gets in trouble put
your hand in your pocket and help him out.”
“Oh,” Dr. Scofield responded, “Paul did those things all his life. Any
_gentleman_ would do those things. Paul was not talking of that when he
said it was a struggle to be good.”
“Well, what did he mean?” the business man asked, somewhat taken aback.
“Not Built That Way!”
“Did you ever try to be meek?” was the preacher’s next question.
“What’s that?”
“Did you ever try to be meek?”
“No, sir! I don’t admire a meek man.”
“Don’t you? Well, God does. His Son was meek and lowly. But now suppose
you started off some morning and determined to be meek all that day, to
love everybody, no matter what mean things another man might say. Would
you find it easy?”
“I couldn’t do it. That’s not in my line. I’m not built that way.”
Just so, we are not built that way. We need to be built over. A new
life needs to come in. And when the law has brought us to that point,
and we cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am!” then the law has
done its proper work. The tragic thing is that most Christians stop
right there in their reading of the seventh chapter of Romans. They
do not go on to the glorious word of deliverance. There is a way out.
Paul has been in bondage under the law of sin. But a new law enters,
and he exclaims, “The law of the Spirit ... made me free from the law
of sin and of death.” What is the new power of that law of the Spirit?
“_Life in Christ Jesus._” What happens when the law of the Spirit is
working, when we are enjoying the freedom indeed wherewith Christ hath
set us free? _The requirement of the law is fulfilled in us._ This law
of the Spirit, of the new Life in Christ Jesus, hath set us free from
the law of sin and death, in order that we might keep the law of God.
And it is kept in us just as long as we walk in the Spirit. God’s plan
is that we should walk in the Spirit all the time; that is “abiding in
Christ.” The struggle of the seventh of Romans is a struggle _under
the law_, it is human effort apart from grace. It is not given as the
normal Christian experience, but a parenthesis between two passages
of glorious liberty, placed there to show what bearing the keeping
of the law has upon the Christian’s experience. The normal Christian
experience is freedom from the dominion of sin.