[Chapter 7-4] Our Flesh That Serves Only the Flesh (Romans 7:14-25)
(Romans 7:14-25)
“For
we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For
what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do
not practice; but what I hate, that I do. If, then, I do what I will not
to do, I agree with the law that it is good. But now, it is no longer I
who do it, but sin that dwells in me. For I know that in me (that is,
in my flesh) nothing good dwells; for to will is present with me, but
how to perform what is good I do not find. For the good that I will to
do, I do not do; but the evil I will not to do, that I practice. Now if I
do what I will not to do, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that
dwells in me. I find then a law, that evil is present with me, the one
who wills to do good. For I delight in the law of God according to the
inward man. But I see another law in my members, warring against the law
of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is
in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this
body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with
the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin.”
How amazing His grace is!
We
give thanks to our God who has permitted us this Summer Bible Meeting
and reigned over the weather, preventing typhoons to give us these
beautiful days. He has sent souls and gathered His people together to
give us His Word and to let us rejoice in fellowship with each other and
the Holy Spirit.
God
is alive! How amazing His grace is! People now think that typhoon
“Doug” will surely come to our country, so officials patrol to withdraw
all the campers in the In-Jae valley area. I went to downtown In-Jae
this afternoon. I heard people talking to each other, worrying over the
typhoon, speculating on how powerful and destructive this typhoon was
going to be.
But
will everything happen in the way they expect, even as we, the children
of God, have gathered here for the summer retreat? If we pray, it will
not rain by the mercy of God. Will God blow away His people? God reigns
the weather, but He does so on account of our faith. He works wisely,
and this means that He will not test those of us whose faith has just
begun by making them wonder, “Why does God give us a typhoon when we
have this summer retreat?”
I
had no power to prevent typhoon “Doug” when I heard about it in the
news. All that I could do was pray. This Summer Bible Meeting had
already been scheduled, we had already gathered, and there was nothing I
could do about it. And I was worried that this chapel might not be
strong enough to withstand the typhoon, given the fact that it was built
with prefabricated materials. So I couldn’t help but rely on God. I
prayed, “Help us God. Protect us. In Jesus’ name I ask, Amen.” And sure
enough, God prevented typhoon Doug! I believe God knows everything. He
leads us to safety because He understands our situations better than we
do.
The
weather shows us so minutely that God is alive. I heard a peal of
thunder like a boom of guns in my tent. So, I came out of my tent and
looked at the sky. The sky was dark and thick clouds were coming over
the valley. So I asked, “Lord, are clouds coming?” My faith began to
weaken, “Lord, what’s going on? Has the typhoon reached here? Is it
really here?” But I had prayed and believed in God, and held on to this
faith, saying to God, “I believe You will take care of us, Lord. I
believe in You. I already believed that You would work for us.” God
really blessed us, as we believed. We thank Him with our hearts.
The flesh is selfish and evil
We
cannot do anything if God does not work for us. Our God keeps and helps
us. Let’s take a look at God’s Word. Romans 7:14-25 tells us that the
Apostle Paul saw himself as staying in the flesh and having been sold
under sin. He also discovered that it was a law that the flesh could not
help but sin while he was alive.
We
who are born again also do evil, though we want to do good with the
flesh. Romans 7:19 states, “For the good that I will to do, I do not do;
but the evil I will not to do, that I practice.” We come to see that no
good dwells in us. Because of that, we sigh in grief, thinking, “Will I
be able to keep my faith?” We are greatly grieved because of our
hopeless and evil flesh. Do you know how selfish the flesh is? Romans
7:18 states, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh) nothing good
dwells; for to will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I
do not find.”
We
are always taking our own side, even as we are the seeds of evildoers.
Do you know how selfish we, all human beings, are? We certainly know we
are evil, but we do not side with the Lord; we take our own side. The
Lord is certainly good, and His will is also good. We know that we are
evil, yet we love ourselves too much. God commanded us not to have other
gods before Him. God told us this to give us the knowledge of sin.
We
love ourselves and do everything for ourselves, though we know how
selfish and self-righteous we are. We fret when there is something
beneficial to us, but how stingy and miserly we are to the Lord! It’s
because we have no sense. Children never let go of their cookies. They
seize what is in their hands until it breaks, and they never share it
because they are young and have no sense. They don’t know that there are
more precious things in the world than cookies. Children are like that;
we are like that.
Our
sins were washed away, but we are still selfish. We give thanks to the
Lord for making us sinless and giving us the Holy Spirit by His power.
But a war begins within ourselves after receiving the remission of sins
and being born again. This war is between the flesh and the Spirit. We
are happy after we are born again, but we are soon tormented by this
war. But the Lord now wants us to work for the Kingdom of God.
Our
Lord abandoned His glory for us. He was sent in the likeness of the
flesh. He was not sent to the world as a handsome man. He came to the
world as a humble man, maybe as a short-legged and ugly man. In fact, it
is said that Jesus was not at all handsome. Isaiah said, “For He shall
grow up before Him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground.
He has no form or comeliness; and when we see Him, there is no beauty
that we should desire Him” (Isaiah 53:2). Still, the Lord has taken away
all our sins.
Our
flesh serves only sin. Paul knew that his flesh was a mass of sin, so
he said, “For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I
hate, that I do,” and yet he did not elaborate in detail because he was
ashamed of his sins.
We
are like garbage cans. We are masses of sin. How deplored would we be
to see ourselves leaving a trail of trash behind us. Yet stung by our
conscience, we say to God, “Lord, I should not do this, and I want to
live according to Your will, but I did it again. How can I stop this,
Lord?”
We can thank God when we know our evilness
We
must think about the grace that Jesus Christ, our God, gave us. We must
think about what God did with our hearts. Only then can we come to know
what is right, and only then can we begin to serve the Lord. It is by
the grace of God and our faith in Him that we seek God, offer ourselves
to Him, and overcome any challenge that may await us as we follow God
with our hearts and walk with Him.
We
begin to deny ourselves when we come to know that we are evil and
useless before God. We realize that avoiding sin is impossible without
serving the Lord because of our flesh, and that we cannot do anything,
though we are blessed greatly, because of our weaknesses. I give thanks
to God who blessed me to serve Him. If God had not put me into the
ministry to serve the gospel, I would have remained merely a mass of sin
that was still in the flesh and would never do anything righteous
before Him.
I
give thanks to God for enabling me to serve Him. That’s why I offer a
prayer like this. “Thank you, Lord. Lord, I need money, but I have
nothing. I want to do all these things for You, though I have nothing.
Please help me. I will not spend the money for me, but for the Lord. If I
spend money on myself, the flesh will be comfortable. But I want to
spend it for the Lord and for the righteous work. This money is precious
for me, because I worked very hard for it. And because it is precious
to me, I offer it to You. Please spend it for your righteous works.”
Those
who know their evilness know that no good thing dwells in them. What do
I mean by the words, ‘No good thing dwells in them’? It means that they
have only evil things in their flesh. It is evil to live only for
oneself.
We thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord
Paul
confessed, “O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this
body of death? I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with
the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of
sin” (Romans 7:24-25). What does the flesh serve? The flesh always
serves sin. However, we serve God with our hearts. Through whom do we
thank God? We thank God through Jesus Christ, our Lord.
Paul
said, “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” So do I. If the Lord
had not taken out all my sins, I couldn’t have been saved because the
flesh still serves sin now.
“I
thank God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!” We give thanks to the Lord
because He took away all the sins of all the flesh. Our flesh serves
only sin, even after we receive the forgiveness of our sins. But the
heart wants to serve God. The reason why we thank God and why the heart
is made righteous is through Jesus Christ. Do you believe this? We thank
God and serve Him because He took away our sins. If the Lord had not
taken away and saved us from the sins of the flesh, we would have
eternally perished. Do you believe this?
Had
the Lord not taken away all our sins, how could we have peace, how
could we give thanks to the Lord, and could we serve the Him? How can a
person who is under sin help other people? How can a person in jail
rescue other people in jail? “I thank God—through Jesus Christ our
Savior.” The Lord cleansed away all our sins for us to serve Him, and He
has given us peace in our hearts.
We are already dead in the world
How
can we preach the gospel, serve God, work for Him, and contribute to
His ministry, without our Lord? We do all these things through our Lord.
We continue to follow the Lord today, tomorrow, and the day after
tomorrow—never changing. This is the right faith. Those who serve the
Lord are like a virtuous and wise woman who keeps her house well. Do not
lead a fickle religious life like a frying pan that cools down as
easily as it heats up in no time. You should follow the Lord all the
time, until He comes again. Consider yourself as cut and perished from
the world after you are born again. I want you to remember that you are
not a person of the world anymore. We have already become dead to the
world.
Our names are eliminated from the family tree of the world. Do you understand? Our names are not in there.
The
world may say to you, “Long time no see. What’s up? I heard you attend
church. I also heard that all your sins are forgiven. So, you have no
sin, huh?”
“No, I have no sin.”
“That’s strange. I think you might have fallen into a wrong church.”
“No, don’t look at it like that. Come to my church. You’ll see how nice it is.”
“I still think you are weird.”
Then
we think, “Why don’t they understand me? I wish they would understand
me.” But can those who are yet to be born again understand us? How can
those who do not know that people can become sinless understand us? How
can they understand that Jesus took away all the sins of the world? They
can’t. So, don’t expect them to understand you. The Lord said good-bye
to the world for us. He waved a yellow handkerchief on the Cross. He
said, “It is finished” (John 19:30), for the fear that we wouldn’t be
able to say good-bye to the world because we are easily moved by pity.
He also said, “I eliminated your names from the family tree of the
world.”
The Lord enabled us, who could never serve Him, to serve Him by taking away all our sins
We,
who could never serve the Lord, were made to be those who could serve
Him through Jesus Christ. By nature, we were the ones who could never
serve the Lord. We must praise the Lord for bringing us into His church
and qualifying us to serve Him. The Lord uses us. It’s not true that we
do His works. Do you understand? The righteous Lord, in other words,
uses us in His righteous works.
Evangelist
Lee once referred to the manure-series in his sermon and said that he
was as filthy and disgusting as a heap of smelly manure. But even that
is a gentle expression. Anything else that you can ever imagine, we are
still filthier. Jeremiah 17:9 states, “The heart is deceitful above all
things.” God enabled those whose hearts are deceitful above all things
to live for the glory of God, the Lord and the Highest of all. He called
us to do His righteous work.
We
can follow the Lord and live in His grace because the Lord washed away
all our sins. We can suffer with Him and be glorified together with Him.
We had already died but for the Lord. If the Lord had not taken away
all our sins, we would have been left out of salvation. We would have
still remained worldly people if we had lived according to the flesh.
The
Lord eternally saved us once and for all. He saved us and made us the
instruments of His eternal ministry. How evil and dirty we are! After
meeting the Lord, we come to find out more and more just how evil and
dirty we are with time. This is why we rejoice when we see the light.
But when we look at ourselves, we sigh in grief, just as Paul confessed,
“O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of
death?” (Romans 7:24)
But
Paul immediately praised the Lord, “I thank God—through Jesus Christ
our Lord!” The Lord washed away all our sins. He blotted out all the
sins of the flesh. How many sins do our flesh commit everyday? Don’t
pretend as if your flesh does not sin.
Do you thank the Lord?
The
Lord blotted out all the sins that we commit with the flesh. Do you
believe? That the Lord took away the sins of the world may not seem like
much to you, but when you realize that He took away all the sins that
are committed by your own flesh, you will shout out, “I thank
God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! Thank you, Lord! I praise You!”
Sin
has its own weight. The Lord has taken away all the sins that we commit
in our entire lifetime, until our last day. How thankful we are! Had we
sinned just a little, we may ask the Lord for His forgiveness with our
prayers of repentance. But our sins are countless and ceaseless to the
end of our lifetime. When we realize this, we can do nothing but to
praise God, “Thank you, Lord. You’ve blotted out all my sins! I praise
You!” We thank God, in other words, “through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Do
you thank God and confess like this? “Thank you, Lord. I give thanks to
You for calling and saving me to serve Your righteousness. I give thanks
to the Lord who saved me from all the sins of the flesh.” Do you thank
the Lord? The true redemption of sins looks this simple, but at the same
time it is not something to be taken lightly. It is very profound,
great, wide, precious and eternal.
We must follow the Lord because there is nothing beneficial in us
We
are a mass of sin. We must know that we ourselves are darkness itself.
“I am darkness, but You are the light. You are the true light, while I
am complete darkness. You are the sun. I am the moon.” The moon can
lighten the earth only by receiving the light from the sun.
The
moon itself cannot lighten. It lightens by reflecting the light that it
receives from the sun. Everything is darkness. Are you light or
darkness? We are in darkness without the Lord. We can thank, serve, and
follow God because of Jesus Christ, and because in Him there is no
condemnation. To serve only our flesh, on the other hand, is to serve
only darkness. Give it up as early as you can. Our flesh does not change
however hard we may try. There is nothing special in us. Our flesh is
not everlasting, and so we must live for eternal things. One who lives
for eternal things is a wise person. We must know ourselves early and
give ourselves up early. We must know that there is nothing to expect
from ourselves, and that there is nothing good in us. We are a mass of
sin that always and only serves our flesh. The flesh says, “Give me
anything I want,” and acts like a leech that sucks blood, attaching
itself to the body (Proverbs 30:15).
We
feel hungry as soon as we go to the toilet after eating something. We
are not satisfied with the flesh however hard we may try to serve it. We
feel hungry in a matter of hours, regardless of how much and how
delicious food we just had. But if we thank the Lord and follow Him, our
joy becomes only bigger.
We
don’t feel empty when we follow our Lord. Do you want to have
everlasting joy after your redemption? Then follow the Lord. Do you want
to lead a life of light? Follow the Lord. Do you want to live a life of
grace? Follow the Lord. Do you want to lead a fruitful life? Know that
you are in darkness and just follow the light.
We
follow the Lord wherever He goes, and we stop wherever He stops. We do
what the Lord wants us to do, and not do what the Lord does not want us
to do. We must walk with Him and follow Him. Do you have anything to
expect from yourself? Of course not! We must follow Him because there is
nothing to be expected from ourselves. Is your flesh eternal? Of course
not! Then why are you following something that can neither offer
anything nor is everlasting?
A
long time ago, I used to sing a song that goes like this. “♪Give me
back my youth♪” But now, I’m okay even if God does not give me back my
youth. On a second thought, I realized that I wouldn’t be that happy if I
returned to my youth. If we follow the Lord, who is the light of our
lives, the crown of glory is laid up for us. You don’t need to return to
your childhood again. Instead we sing, “♪I will not deny the Lord and I
will follow Him everyday for the rest of my days♪” This shows the true
faith with which we do not deny the Lord in our lives and with which we
always thank God. Let’s sing this gospel song!
“♪I
love God the Lord who formed man from the dust of the ground; Who
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; ♫And who sent His Son for
us. I am formed after His likeness, so I will dedicate my body to the
Lord. ♫I will not deny the Lord and I will follow Him everyday for the
rest of my days.♪”
I give real thanks to the Lord
I
give real thanks to the Lord. The Lord took away our sins and enabled
us to serve Him, follow Him, and do His righteous work. If the Lord had
not blotted out all the sins that we commit with our flesh and taken
them all away, how could we do His righteous work? Not even 0.1%! A
sinner is still evil no matter how good-natured he/she may seem. How
wonderful is it that the Lord would wash away our sins and enable us to
serve Him? How marvelous is it that the Lord would eliminate all our
sins and bless us, who had been immersed in filthiness all our lives,
lived like a miser, been bound to hell, and lived a vain life without
the Lord?
That
the Lord has chosen us to serve Him by taking away all our sins and
blessing us with our redemption by faith shows just how great God’s
grace is. How can we be righteous with sin in our hearts? The fact that
we have no sin is surely an extraordinary grace. Praise God! The flesh
will certainly commit sin again. Even though we hear God’s Word now, we
will sin again, perhaps as soon as we step out of this chapel. Because
of that, I praise the Lord for washing away all our sins. Have no
doubt—our Lord Jesus Christ took away all our sins by His baptism in the
Jordan River and ended the judgment for sin on the Cross! I believe and
praise God! How, then, can we praise God? We can praise God through
Jesus Christ!
Beloved
saints! We cannot recompense for God’s grace however hard we may try
for the rest of our lives. It is not enough even if we eternally give
thanks to the Lord, who enabled us to do His righteous and fruitful work
by taking away all our sins, however weak we may be. We cannot praise
Him enough even if we praise Him for the rest of our lives.
We
deeply know in our minds that nothing good dwells within us. Think it
over. Will you sin as long as you live? You surely will sin, but the
Lord has taken away your sins already. The Lord blessed us to do the
work of God. The Lord enabled us to serve Him. We cannot help but give
thanks to our Lord. I want you to praise the Lord and live a life of
thankfulness to Him through Jesus Christ for all your life. Our God
enabled us to live a thankful life to God. God saved us from all the
sins that we commit with the flesh. He saved us from all our sins in
order to for us to serve Him with our hearts. Because the grace of our
Lord is so great, we want to follow and serve Him. Let us thank Him with
all our hearts.
How
amazing the grace of God given to us through Jesus Christ is! I really
want you to know just how wicked and weak your flesh is, to look into
what you are doing, to think about whether the Lord really took away
your sins or not, to give thanks to the Lord, and to live by faith. I
give thanks to the Lord who enabled us to live precious lives. “I thank
God—through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then, with the mind I myself serve
the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin” (Romans 7:25). We
love God with our hearts, but with our flesh we love sin. But our Lord
is lovelier. It would not be a sin until we commit a lawless deed with
our flesh, but the Lord has already blotted out even the sins that we
would commit in future. This is why our Lord is lovelier, and why He is
to be thanked.
Thank
You, Lord. I praise You for giving us the hearts to serve You, and for
saving us wholly from all the sins of our flesh, committed throughout
our lives.
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