Are We Still Sinners After Salvation?

Hey, welcome to That's a Good Question, the podcast where we answer questions about the Christian faith in plain language. We are a podcast of Resound Media, a place you can trust to find great resources for the Christian life and church leadership.

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this passage, these questions, do us a favor and share it with them so they can learn and grow from God's word as well. I'm Jon, I get to serve as a pastor, and I love being a part of this show and getting to answer questions about the Bible.

I'm here with Mitch.

Yeah, and that is what we're gonna be talking about this week, and I'm really excited. I'm excited to be a part of this podcast because we get to answer hard questions about the faith. And this week is no exception. This week, we have a question on Roman 7,

which is a highly debated passage in scripture on whether this is, Paul's talking about someone who's already saved or who isn't saved. And I'm really excited to jump in this passage because it's been debated really since this has been been written down. Yeah, and we're gonna do some Bible study on the show. Absolutely, and it's got a lot of application, practical application for our lives and how we view our walk in Christ. And so this is very important and so if you're listening to this, buckle in. This is gonna be awesome. Yeah, for example, does the Christian still struggle with sin?

Yeah.

You know, the Bible says that we are saints. The Bible also says that we're sinners, which are we only one of those? Are we both of those?

Yeah.

Do saints in Christ still struggle with sin in the Christian life? And how do we struggle with sin? Yeah. So, really important for us to think about as we think about the practical Christian life.

Also brings in, if you've ever heard the word, sanctification, we say that's the process that you're in as a believer of becoming more and more like Jesus, more and more holy. We are justified when we become Christians. We're declared righteous because of Jesus' righteousness, because he saved us by grace through faith. But then, you know, even though Jesus is perfect and now we have his righteousness, we've got to live this life in which we know, you know as a Christian, that day to day you are not perfect like Jesus is perfect.

And so how do we live this life of growing more and more like Jesus until the day when he returns or we pass into glory? And so all those things come into play when we talk about this important passage. Yeah, I mean, I think that there are so many important questions that come from this topic within this passage, right? Many Christians say things like, we are holy.

I remember even just a few years ago going like, you know, I struggle with thinking about myself as holy because I know that I'm still a sinner, but you know, how does it all work? You know, and then on the other side, if I'm seeing myself as only a saint and not a sinner, you know, how does that play, how does that affect how I live out my Christian life and my identity in Christ? Getting that wrong can be super detrimental to our faith, and so that's why this passage

is so important for us to understand. If you lean too far into, well, I'm a saint and not a sinner. Well, then I would worry that you are missing. You're maybe not realizing how much you actually sin on a day to day basis. I think you're I think you're missing something about just reality. Yeah. If you fall too far on the side of, well, I'm a sinner and not a saint,

then I think you're missing some of the gospel truth that you've been saved in Christ, that he has taken away your sin. Yeah. So to err too far on either side, you're gonna run into problems. You gotta be able to embrace both of these things in tension, and I think that's what we're talking about

here in Romans 7. Before we jump into reading this passage, I think giving some context of what this passage is about is really important. Could you do that for us?

Who's the writer? Yeah. What was his upbringing?

How does that play into how we understand this? Yeah, so the Apostle Paul is writing, and you might remember him, he was formerly known as Saul. He was a Jew, he was a religious leader, he persecuted Christians until Jesus got a hold of him. He came to know that Jesus was his Messiah, his Lord, his Savior. He embraced him and then he became a church planner, a teacher, a preacher, and now he's writing this letter to the church

in Rome to give them some instruction. Verses 16 and 17 of chapter one in this passage, or in this book, are really the thesis statement. He says that I'm not ashamed of the gospel, for it's the power of God for salvation. And he spends the rest of the book, he talks about some bad news about us as human beings

in the first three chapters, and then he gets into some good news about us being saved in Jesus, and then applying that, and what does that all mean for us? And so that's where we find ourself, right in the midst of those arguments.

Yeah, I think a lot of people are probably listening to this right now. Maybe aren't they don't have Romans 7 memorized. So would you read it for us? Yeah, we can Understand. Yeah, so I'm gonna read just the part that we're talking about today Which starts in verse 14 for we know that the law is spiritual But I'm of the flesh sold under sin for I do not understand my own actions 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 with the law that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand.

For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

Yeah, there it is. Here's the question for today on this passage. Who is the person in Romans 7?

Is it someone before they're saved or is it someone after they're saved? Yeah, great question. So there's lots of disagreement about this. I'm going to advocate for the position that this is Paul talking about his experience as a Christian. So this is post becoming a Christian Paul, not pre-Christian Saul.

There are many that argue the other side. I think that we're friends, this is something that I think you can come to this text and disagree about. I think it is important and that's why we're gonna talk about how to understand it, but you can disagree about it.

So I'm gonna try to make that case and we're gonna just talk through kind of both sides of it a little bit and how that all works. Let me just start making the case a little bit and then we can kind of talk about it. So I think one of the things that as you're reading the book of Romans and you're going through, there is no indicator. Paul doesn't stop and say, well now I'm going

to talk about the old me. I'm going to talk about the past. You know he continues to use the first person pronoun I. He continues to talk in the present tense. You know he doesn't all of a sudden start using the past tense. I think that's just kind of a literary argument for it. But then also let me, let me just highlight, here's some things that Paul says in this passage that I think can't be true if

he's not a Christian at this point. I think it's really challenging to think of how could Paul say these things if he wasn't a believer? So, so just let me give you some examples. In verse 22, he says, I delight in the law of God in my inner being. Okay, in verse 25 he says, I serve the law of God in my mind.

Okay, those things, loving God's law, serving God's law, those are things that believers do, right? That their heart has been changed. The Holy Spirit's converted them, been at work inside of their heart. Otherwise, you don't like God's law,

you don't wanna follow it, you don't wanna serve it.

Yeah.

Think about verse 15.

He says, I do the very thing I hate. He's talking about sin. Hating sin is a uniquely Christian experience. When you're living in sin, you don't hate it. You're just doing it. You're just living in it. You don't really see the problem.

This is clearly someone who's convicted by their sin. Yeah.

When we read Scripture, we said conviction of sin is a gift of the Holy Spirit. That's something we experienced when God's working in our hearts. I could go on here one more and then we can talk about it some more. So verse 18 he says he distinguishes his flesh from the rest of him. Okay. So he's making a distinction about like two sides within him. I think that's also a uniquely Christian thing.

I think of what CS Lewis said, right? Uh, there's two dogs that wage war within the one I feed is the one that wins. Right, this is a picture that we often paint of the Christian life, that there are sinful nature inside of us, fighting with what we call our godly nature inside of us, our old self, our new self,

another way to talk about it, think about it. Right, this war only happens once you become a believer, otherwise, you've just got the one, you've just got your flesh, right? You don't have something else waging war. So more arguments I can make.

Let's start with those.

Yeah. Thoughts, questions?

No, it sounds a lot like a lot of the, you know, this is a position

that a lot of the reformers took.

Sure. And it sounds a lot like Martin Luther's experience. You know, he was convicted by sin, tried to defeat it himself and realized, you know, I have to be made new. There's no fighting. There's no way to become completely sanctified without Christ.

Right. When I read it, and maybe when you hear it, I just identify with the experience. Now, let me be quick to say that when we're interpreting the Bible, the first thing we need to do is understand what the text is saying. We don't want to read our own experience back into it. But there is something to it. I mean, Scripture reads us, right? It's talking about our experience of battling against sin, trying to follow the Lord. So when I read things like, for I do not understand my own actions, verse 15, I do not do what I want, but I do the thing I hate. I think, yeah, I identify with

that. When I'm living in sin, when I give in to sin, I think, man, you know, I hate that. I didn't want to do that, but obviously part of me did and that's why I did it. And that's the battle. I think especially, you know, maybe somebody battling some kind of particularly addictive sin,

whether that be pornography or alcohol or, you know, whatever it is, gossip, you know, sure, yeah. All kinds of things, right? You're, you become aware of the sin that you're doing, you hate it and yet you, you know, hopefully you're growing and yeah, you're,

hopefully you're, you're progressively beaving it. But you know, you still fall into it sometimes. And I think that's, that's how you feel, right? I think this is a descriptor of that. Yeah. And I think regardless of what side you come down on this,

that has to be the takeaway that we're gonna launch into is that the Christian life is not devoid, is not void of like, of sin. We are still sinful people trying to live into further and further sanctification. And I mean, the rest of the New Testament is so clear on that point. Right. Right. I think of even in the next chapter, Romans 8, which is not a debated

passage about what it's about. I think of a passage that I've thought about a lot that actually there's a great book called The Mortification of Sin written about this one verse Romans 8, 13, for if you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. And in that book, John Owen spends an entire book expounding about how you get the flesh versus the Holy Spirit and how you're supposed to put to death the flesh is a

Christian battle. This is kind of what we sometimes describe as the already-not-yet theology, that on the one hand you and I have already been saved by Jesus. He died for our sin, we've been declared righteous, we have a legal status before God that we wear Christ's righteousness, we are justified, we're righteous. That's what justification is, is that by the law you are no longer seen as a sinner but as someone who is perfect, right?

Right. But in reality, you know, the rest of the Bible talks about that there's this other process called sanctification, right? Right, exactly. So you've been justified, you've been declared righteous, and one day when Jesus returns, or when you die, you know, you will be righteous, but in between, that's why we call it the already and the not yet. It's already true that you're saved, that you're justified, but it's not yet true that

you're fully and completely righteous actually. We live in this in-between state. Like you said, we call that sanctification, progressive sanctification. We're growing in holiness over the course of our lives, but we're not there yet. So I think that's the messy middle that we live in as New Testament Christians, post the cross of Jesus, pre the return of Jesus.

That's kind of where we're at.

Yeah.

I think that's even true in, you know, we are Reformed pastors at Peace Church. We believe in Reformed theology. One of those pieces is this idea of the order of salvation, right? You know, there's this whole idea of there's conversion, right? There's preservation that we're held in a true belief. There's repentance, there's justification,

then there's sanctification, and then at the end of our life is glorification, right? These things, there is an order to this, right? And we don't go right from conversion, justification, to glorification being perfectly sanctified. Right, actually, so we did, if you want to check out some more resources on Resound

Media, we did a whole video series, it's called Foundations of the Gospel, and three of those episodes are called Justification, Sanctification, and Glorification. I forget which one, or maybe it's all three of them, but in one of those episodes I share kind of a chart that I've used to teach this before, that justification is where life starts as a believer, then glorification is where it ends or where the next part of it ends. Yeah, the beginning of the end. But then in between, you've got this line that goes up and down in holiness.

And so that's the life of the believer. It's not a perfect straight line. You don't jump all the way up to perfection, nor do you have a perfect diagonal that just you're consistently every day, you're more and more. Well, you have some ups and downs. It should be an overall trajectory upward, more holy, but you have some ups and downs. Yeah, and that's, you know, there's two perspectives on this too. There's two errors that you can go in in this way. You can see yourself as never ever only

going up and never ever having any sort of sin. That would be wrong. But then I think the Catholic way of viewing it is that, you know, these ups and downs are not just part of our sanctification, but they're part of our justification, right? That if we make too many big mistakes, all of a sudden we're off the plan of salvation. That's not true either. That we are still battling the flesh.

We still, we aren't yet glorified. We aren't yet fully sanctified.

Yeah, yeah.

Totally. Let me, let me bring in another passage that I think relates to what we're saying. Galatians 5, 17, I think in a lot of ways has some parallels to Romans chapter 7. And by the way, I want to, I want to just give credit where credit is due here. Some of the references I'm making, I've learned a lot from Pastor John Piper.

His series, Teaching Through the Book of Romans, I think it was over the course of like four years. Great set of sermons, I've got them on CD from back in the day. Oh wow, what are those? I know, right, you have to explain that.

Cookie and Cocoa Dispenser, we watched the Santa Claus that movie last night, so that's. No, so I've listened to those sermons many times and so his teaching on Romans 7 here is influencing me a lot so I just want to give credit where credit's due. Another passage I think it was Galatians 5 17 Paul says, same writer, Paul says, but I say walk by the Spirit and you will not gratify the desires of

the flesh for the desires of the flesh are against the Spirit and the desires of the Spirit are against the flesh for these two are opposed to each other to keep you from doing the things you want to do. So here it's saying what we've been saying about this battle between our sinful nature and our godly nature, the flesh and the spirit. But then it closes with that line that sounds so much like Romans 7, to keep you from doing the things you want to do. That sounds

like Romans 7. So just, you know, there's no question in Galatians 5 that Paul is talking to Christians about the Christian experience. So I think that's just making the case again. One question that I think somebody could ask. Is in verse 14, I think they could ask the question, how could you describe a Christian this way? Let me read it, it says, for we know that the law is spiritual,

but I am of the flesh sold under sin. So I think somebody who's objecting to what I'm arguing for about the interpretation of Romans 7 would say, how could you think that that describes a Christian? Of the flesh, sold under sin. And I get that, I understand why you might think that.

I think, again, I think this is the conflict of the Christian life. I think what Paul is saying or alluding to is that when we lived just in sin, when we didn't know Jesus, we were slaves of sin. Now as Christians we are supposed to be slaves of righteousness, slaves of Christ, but I think the reality of the Christian life

is that even though we have a new master, we keep going back to the old master. This is the already not yet, right? It's legally, officially true. We have a new master. We shouldn't go back to the old one and do what he says. But unfortunately, sometimes we do. Until Jesus returns, we will unfortunately sometimes crawl back to our old master.

Yeah.

John, do you think it's possible that Paul could be blending the timeline here, that he's kind of talking in first person, maybe looking back a little bit during his pre-Christian conversion, during his time trying to save himself, and then also kind of seeing himself in maybe more of a sanctified lens, seeing himself as someone who has now the Holy Spirit. How would you wrestle with that question? Yeah, I think – and there's some other parts of Romans that I would say I think Paul is a little – he's just kind of talking about his experience without being really specific about the timeline.

So I get that. I'm sympathetic to that idea that he might be talking across both experiences. I think that's possible There are some things that I think maybe lean against that which would be in a couple of passages in Scripture he talks about a lot of Confidence and zeal that he had for the law. I think of like Galatians 1 Philippians 3 Yeah, and he doesn't really talk about him feeling a war within himself. When he talks about his pre-conversion Saul, religious leader, Jewish guy, he seems to talk very confidently about, yeah, I was the best, you know, I kept the law, I nailed

it, I had it all set, and I was zealous about it. So he doesn't seem to talk about himself having that conflicted experience, I don't think, until he encounters Christ. Now, again, I could be wrong about that, but that would be kind of my first reaction. I think that's interesting that he might be blending the timeline a little bit.

All right,

so let me make one more argument from the concluding verses of the passage here. So when we look at verses 24 and 25, he says, who will set me free from this body of death? Um, again, I think that's a, I think that's a uniquely Christian cry. You know, that's, that's us, right? When we sin, we think, man, God, just please free me from this. And in one sense, he has, but in another sense, we're not fully there yet.

And so I think that's a Christian cry. But then in verse 25, I think we've got a summary statement that to me, it would be challenging to think of Paul saying this, looking back as a pre-conversion person. So let me read to you. Here it is. Oh, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Now, if he ended there and that was the end of it, I think I get it, right? You're saying, okay, he concludes with victory, now I'm a different person, but he goes on. So thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.

So then I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh, I serve the law of sin. So verse 25, if that's his summary concluding statement, I think he lands on saying, yeah, this is a battle. I got my sinful flesh. I got the law of God.

I got the Holy Spirit. And these two are still at war in me. One of the people who is a great resource for this, a commentary by John MacArthur, lays this argument out really well. Because I've laid it out horribly. No, no, you did a really great job with it.

But that was a segue into talking about Moody Publishing because they're the one who published his commentary. And if you're interested in getting his commentary, I'm sure you can get it on moodypublishers.com and you can use code RESOUND40 to get 40% off. They've got other great resources

besides John MacArthur's commentaries, Bible studies, tons of other great books, anything to help you dive deeper into your walk with Christ. I highly recommend them. I use their resources quite frequently. John, I know you do too.

Yep, for sure, agreed. Yeah, check it out. 40% off is a great deal. Yeah, great resources at Moody Publishers. We've had some great interviews with some of their authors this month on Resound as well.

Yeah, why does it matter if we get this wrong?

Why does it matter if we go in some of these maybe erroneous views of this passage? Yeah. So let's start with the one if you lean too heavily on the sin. So to me, the two sides are leaning too heavily on either that we're just saints and not sinners or that we're just sinners and not saints. That's maybe an easy way just to paint the picture, even if it's not entirely fair to

each position. But let's start with the first. So if you lean too much into a defeatist mentality, that man, I'm a believer in Christ, but see, you know, I'm never gonna win. I'm just gonna admit defeat to sin right now.

That is not God's design for you. That is not God's call for you.

Yeah, and I think that would be really leaning into legalism, right? We're adding something to this passage that isn't there. Right? We're saying, Paul's talking about that there's sin in our lives, I have sin in my life, and therefore, I cannot ever be free from this.

That's not what this passage is saying. It's adding something to there.

You know, that's one of the ways to have an erroneous view of this passage. Totally. So, when I think of this tension between saint and sinner, I think of some passages in 1 John.

1 John is kind of tough.

It says some things that seem like they are opposites, and yet we have to hold them in tension and figure out how they go together. So here's one. Here's 1 John, chapter 2. He says, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous.

So I mean, it seems kind of crazy that he would say, if anyone does sin. Right? So he's, he's going so strong on the side of, man, you're, you're a saint, not a sinner. You got to fight the sin. You got to, if anyone does sin, he paints the picture almost like, almost like it's possible to achieve perfection. That's another topic we can talk about, but I would say it's not possible to achieve that in this life.

We will achieve that when Jesus returns. But he, but he's saying so strongly that we need to fight against sin. We need to grow in holiness. We need to be like Jesus. So if anyone does sin, who says that? So that's the one side. So would you say it's wrong for a Christian to say that they are living a life without

sin actively right now?

Yeah, it seems harsh, but... Like if I were to ask, if I were to tell you, John, in the last year I haven't sinned, could

I say that to you and be truthful?

I think the answer is no. My challenge to you would be if you think that you are living a life that's perfectly without sin, now again, there is lots of room that we can grow in holiness. So I don't want to give a defeatist mentality. You can fight sin, you can have victory, you can have less and less sin across the course of your life.

And put some sins in your life to death. Yes, you can kill some sins. But yeah, if you were to come to me and say, I have no sin over the last year, I would challenge you and say, I think you need to think more carefully

about what the Bible says about specific, about sins of maybe not, you know, actions, words, thoughts, your heart. You know, I think of...

What about just the greatest commandment, right? Can you love the Lord your God with all of your heart? Right? There are commandments to not do something, right? But then there are a lot of commandments to do something. And we don't often think about those as being sinful

when we don't do those, right? So the greatest commandment is to love the Lord, your God with all of your heart, soul, mind and strength. I think that's a pretty hard thing to do. Like I don't love the Lord with all of my strength very, very often. It's very, very rare that I'm

using all of my strength. Sure. Right? Yeah. Or I think of, yeah, along those lines, I think of Romans 14, 23, whatever is not from faith is sin. Yeah. Okay, so that's dialing down past the actions and the words, even the thoughts, to the motivations, to the intentions of your heart behind what you do. So even if you're doing the right thing, do you do it with the right heart? Yeah. So I think that's the thing. I think if you think that you've

achieved perfection, then I think you're not grasping just how deep God's call to holiness goes. Yeah, and the depth of how sinful we are too, right? Right. So to give to the other side now, so we've said, all right, we don't want to have a defeatist mentality, right? You don't want to live saying I can't have any victory over sin because absolutely you can. Jesus Christ overcame the grave, He overcame sin, the Holy Spirit lives within you, you can fight and win against

sin. Don't give up on that fight, you can. And it's a battle worth fighting too, right? If we believe that we're gonna live in perfection. Why wouldn't we want to spend our life trying to pursue, to be as close as we can, purifying our heart and our mind, getting us ready for our eventual state, eternal state.

Yeah, right.

If you're gonna live that way for all of eternity,

start now, right?

Yeah, so practice.

Yeah, totally.

So to go to the other side now, so if you're on the other side saying what you just said, which is having a vision for too much, you're thinking of yourself as having more victory than you actually have. You're a saint and not a sinner.

So here's another passage from 1 John that I think addresses that. Verse eight in chapter one. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. Verse 10.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us." Okay, there John says very clearly, you can't say that. You can't say that you're perfect. You can't say that you have no sin. If you do, he says, you're making God a liar, because God says that you have sinned. So you just can't err so far on that side. I think that's, to me, again, that's one of the challenges of 1 John, is he says some things that seem contradictory, but they're not. They're things we have to hold in tension. Right. And that would be going on the other side of that line, right?

You know, seeing yourself as having no hope, right, that's adding to Scripture. The other side is taking away from Scripture, right? It's not seeing the reality of your sin, right? That's, we'd call that licentiousness. Tim Keller calls that illegalism, or somebody called it illegalism. I like that. It's the opposite of legalism. And that's just good understanding for us as we're people who try to understand the Bible. There's two ways to mess up a passage.

Either add stuff to it or take away from it. The reality we want to be on is what does this passage say.

Yeah, amen.

So, brothers and sisters, as you're waging war against your sin Here's a passage keep coming back to 1st John chapter 1 verse 9 right in between the two pet two verses I just read if we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness So that's the hope of the gospel is that yeah, we still have sin in our lives Yeah, one day we will be righteous as Christ is righteous, but in this life right now,

we still have sin, but we can receive forgiveness. We can be cleansed because of what Jesus has done for us. Not what we do, but what Jesus has done for us. Yeah. I want to plug, if you have questions about this topic, write them in at resoundmedia.cc/questions. Write in your questions to us. We'd love to hear them.

And those questions will probably end up on another future podcast. We'd love to jump back into this subject and dive deeper into it. So thanks for some questions on Romans 7 and on the challenge of are we saints, are we sinners, are we both. Love that, appreciate that. An important thing for us to think about as Christians.

Thanks everybody for listening. Have a great week. Do us a favor, like, follow, subscribe on TikTok, YouTube, Instagram. Helps us get the word out so more people can benefit from teaching of God's Word. teaching of God's Word.

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