Conflicted
Christianity is for conflicted people. It is for people who are at war with themselves. It is for people who have good intentions but seem to always lack the will power when the time comes to follow through. Christianity is for people who live two separate lives: the one that they put on for everyone around them to see and the one they live internally. Christianity is for people who surprise themselves with their thoughts or behaviors, who say, “I can’t believe I just thought that.” “I can’t believe I just said that or did that.” Or “Why can’t I control myself?” “Why can’t I stop doing this?” Christianity is for conflicted people.
Today we are going to look at the passage in the Bible that affirms this. There are arguably many more that one could cite to back up my claim that Christianity is for conflicted people, but none would be clearer or more explicit than this passage today. We are going to look at Paul’s self-description in Romans 7. In it we see what it is like to be a human being, and especially one that is a Christian. I do not think one needs to be a Christian, however, to read and relate to Paul here. He essentially speaks to our fundamental problem as people, our inability to line up our desires and our actions; the inability to act on what we know is right and good. In other words Paul’s self-description here in Romans 7 speaks to anyone who is conflicted, anyone who understands what it means to have a civil war going on inside them.
Now, almost everyone I know, myself included, likes to put on a front that they are consistent people. We all like to be thought of as people of integrity, right? I live my life consistently with what I believe to be true. In fact, in many ways I think it is one of the highest goods in our culture, the one objective truth out there, that we hold up and respect people who are consistent, who practice what they preach, who walk the talk, who have integrity. What a person’s specific belief system happens to be is less important these days. We have all been impacted in some way shape or form by post-modernity, so we don’t really get too worked up about exactly what people believe any more. “You know, your truth is your truth and that’s awesome. I’m so glad you found something that works for you.” These are just a couple of the condescending remarks we might hear or even might say when we’re at a cocktail party. But we like when we see people who live in a way that is consistent with their worldview or belief system.
A little aside, even though I am coming off a tad bit cynical here, the truth is that it is a great thing when people with different worldviews can get together and engage respectfully. The issue is when we become so “tolerant” of each other that no one can actually say anything anymore for fear of offending someone. As one of our professors likes to say, “Sameness does not equal intimacy. True relationship happens when differences are acknowledged and not ignored.” There has got to be room for people to have differing points of view and to really discuss them. So, there’s my sermon within a sermon. It reminds of Austin Powers, “The are only two things I hate in this world: people who are intolerant of other people’s cultures and the Dutch.”
We like people who are consistent. We celebrate it, and we deplore anyone that is inconsistent. In fact it is one of the greatest criticisms and objections levied toward Christians and the church today, “They’re all hypocrites.” “They say they are all about love, but all they do is judge.” Which just happens to be a judgmental statement, but don’t bother me with details. We want integrity so much so that we will write off the entire Christian faith because they are not consistent with what they say they believe regardless of whether or not we agree with what they believe. There may be just an ounce of irony there. It reminds me of one of the best scenes in the 1992 movie Wayne’s World. See below:
The truth is that no one is consistent. We all want to be seen as such, and we may do a pretty good job of keeping up that appearance on an external level, but internally the truth is we are all hypocrites. We all say one thing and do another. We all believe one thing and do another. No matter what it is. Paul’s words in Romans 7 might as well be my own. “For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
There’s another way that the recovery world uses to describe this. They say, “You spot it, you got it.” Have you ever noticed how much you react to certain people? Something they do just gets under your skin. The funny thing is that very often we are seeing ourselves reflected back to us in these people and it drives us nuts. Not always, but very often. “You spot it, you got it.” We get so worked up because it hits so close to home, and most of the time we are not even self-aware enough to realize what’s happening. I am completely guilty of this. One of the more obvious and G-rated examples in my life is driving. I get so ticked off at people when I see them distracted on their phones while driving. Once I am able to pass them I usually yell something like, “Get off your phone!” And then I don’t think anything of it when I pick up my phone and try to read the text I just got, which is way worse than taking a call. I am a complete hypocrite. I get so annoyed with other people doing the very things I am guilty of on a regular basis.
These have all been rather humorous examples of our hypocrisy, but what we see in Paul is how this plays out on a moral level. If we are not consistent with our own, often self-made worldviews, standards, or belief systems, then we are certainly not consistent with any higher absolute. We don’t have a chance when it comes to maintaining integrity in relation to the moral law.
This is true across the board. It does not depend on your amount of effort. It doesn’t matter if you are consistent most of the time or if you never are. It does not matter if you tell yourself, you don’t believe in this crap anyway, so it doesn’t apply to you. We are all guilty of hypocrisy. And I want to tell you that this is good news. How could this be good news?
It’s good news for a few reasons. First, the description in Romans 7 is good news for us because it means that we are not alone. One of our addictions as a society is the tendency for comparison, our knee jerk reaction to size each other up, to evaluate our lives based on the lives of others. This comparison slices two ways. We have people in our worlds that we view as worse off than us for various reasons, and we compare ourselves to them in order to feel better about our lives, better about our situations. Whatever it may be, your financial situation, your looks, your relationship, your job, family, etc. etc. We keep these people on our radar because we also have other people in our lives that we do not measure up to, those who are living the life we want for whatever reason. We’re like Rick Springfield, and we sing, “I wish that I had Jessie's girl. I wish that I had Jessie's girl. Where can I find her, a woman like that?” He goes on: “And I'm lookin' in the mirror all the time. Wonderin' what she don't see in me. I've been funny; I've been cool with the lines. Ain't that the way love's supposed to be? Tell me why can't I find a woman like that?” We’re addicted to comparison, and the result usually is the thought that no one understands our situation. No one gets what we’re going through. We are alone.
It is one of the main lies of our sin and the devil; that you are somehow worse off. You are somehow beyond the pail. You are the one person that is suffering in this way. Another word for it is isolation, and it is one of the great tools of hell. But then comes Paul in Romans 7 and all of a sudden I hear someone that knows what I’m dealing with. Paul of all people. This is the guy who is arguably the greatest missionary of the Christian church ever, author of half of the New Testament confessing his own conflict, his own inconsistency, his own hypocrisy. He is so open and explicit in this passage that it instantly cuts through. You are not alone. “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 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. Wretched man that I am!” You are not alone.
Satan and our sin would tell us that we should not be this open. We should not be vulnerable because it exposes our weakness, and weakness is bad. We need to be good, strong, capable, consistent, positive, and on and on, and that just drives us further into the darkness of isolation. But thank God Paul risks it. Thank God he opens up and lets us into his conflicted reality. What seems like bad news is actually good news because it brings relief; it brings solidarity. Remember Christianity is for conflicted people. We are not alone.
The second reason this sober description is good news is because being accurately described leads to the right questions, and the right questions are the beginning of freedom. Usually, when we are living in the world of Rick Springfield we ask questions based on our horizontal focus, our obsession with the world around us. “Why can’t I find a woman like that?” We focus on issues in our lives that are certainly serious at times, but they are not the true root issue. We think that a relationship is the thing that will make our lives better and make our suffering end. If I could just find the perfect someone, then everything would be ok. Just think of all of the internet dating sites out there now. We have got to find that Mr. or Mrs. Right then we’ll be safe. You can go down the earlier lists of comparison: job, money, looks, family, etc.
We may be asking ourselves other questions too. Maybe we have caught a glimpse of our inner brokenness and we’re asking those questions I posed a little earlier, “How could I have done something like that?” How could I have thought that about her, she’s my best friend?” “Why can’t I get it together?” “Why can’t I figure this out?” Questions like these reveal something. They reveal the fact that we still think our problems, our inconsistencies, our conflicts are things that we should be able to solve. We should be able to do something about them. They are problems that we should be able to fix. They betray the fact that we still think it is all up to us. We just need to try harder, work more, practice, practice, practice.
When we are asking these kinds of questions we have not been described accurately enough. We have seen part of the picture, but not the whole thing. We need to read Paul’s words because there we are taken to the real root issues of our conflict. We are dealing with sin. We are dealing with a fundamental inability to do what we know is right. When Paul goes there, when he gets as painfully honest about his conflicted reality as he can he has no other option than to ask the right question. He sums up his situation saying, “Wretched man that I am! Who will save me from this body of death?”
He doesn’t think his problem is something that he can solve. He has seen where the applications of more will power takes him and that’s to the same painful conclusion. He doesn’t look for things to save him; more money, a new job, a new car, a drug, etc. He knows he needs Someone outside of himself to do nothing short of raising him from the dead. “Who will save me from this body of death?” He has stared his conflicted sinful state in the face and he knows it only leads to one place, in fact it is as if he already is experiencing something about death right now. He’s crushed by the pain of his own hypocrisy, and that leads him to ask the right kind of questions. He is looking for Someone with power where he doesn’t have it. He is looking for Someone who can stand where he cannot. He is looking for a Savior.
And this brings us to the third and final reason the mirror of Romans 7 is good news. We’ve said we see we are not alone. It is good to hear someone else give voice to our own pain and inner war. Such an accurate description leads us to ask the right kind of questions, “Who will save us from this body of death?” Or as the Psalmist asked, “Where does my help come from?” And finally, the right questions lead to the right answers. Paul’s honest self-description, his deep knowledge of his own need, leads to revelation. He gives the only satisfying answer to his question, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Who will save us from this body of death? Who will save us from our conflicted selves? Who will save us from our hypocrisy, from our inconsistency? God will through our Lord Jesus Christ. In fact, God already has, which is why Paul is giving thanks here. He knows that God has already done it for him in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Jesus stood where Paul could not. Jesus was consistent completely and without fail. Jesus fulfilled that moral standard that none of us could and brought an end to it. He went to the cross to die so that sin, death and the devil would no longer have any reign over us. We will not suffer in these bodies of death for all eternity, but will instead experience resurrection; a new freedom. We even experience aspects of it now. He has taken these bodies of death and remade them. We are new creations in him because we have been given an answer to that inner conflict, to that civil war that rages and wants us to succumb to isolation and comparison and inadequate questions with inadequate answers. We have been given the answer of Jesus Christ, the one true Savior God that gives us himself unconditionally and declares a new reality over us, and we find it in Paul in the next two sentences after this passage. Paul summed up his situation after considering his inner conflict calling himself wretched. But after he considers God’s radical grace to him in Jesus Christ his conclusion is this: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the truth of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death” (Romans 8:1-2).
Christianity is for conflicted people. Jesus is for conflicted people, like Paul, like me, like you. And He brings nothing short of freedom to us; freedom from the conflict, freedom from the isolation, freedom from the comparison, and most of all freedom from death. None of that defines us anymore. “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (7:25) Amen.
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