7/6/08                                                                                 ROMANS 7:14-8:1

“DOING WHAT I DON’T WANT—

RECEIVING WHAT I DON’T DESERVE”

Rev. James Singleton

Six-year-old Brandon decided one Saturday morning to fix his parents pancakes. He found a big bowl and spoon, pulled a chair to the counter, opened the cupboard and pulled out the heavy flour canister, spilling it on the floor.

He scooped some of the flour into the bowl with his hands, mixed in most of a cup of milk and added some sugar, leaving a floury trail on the floor which by now had a few tracks left by his kitten.

Brandon was covered with flour and getting frustrated. He wanted this to be something very good for Mom and Dad, but it was getting very bad.

He didn’t know what to do next, whether to put it all into the oven or on the stove and he didn’t know how the stove worked! Suddenly he saw his kitten licking from the bowl of mix and reached to push her away, knocking the egg carton to the floor. Frantically he tried to clean up this monumental mess but slipped on the eggs, getting his pajamas white and sticky. And just then he saw Dad standing at the door. (To be continued!)

Oh, the messes that result even from our best intentions. What was it the Apostle Paul said, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.” Who cannot identify with that?

Married couples vow their love and loyalty to one another and intend to live happily together for the rest of their lives. But half of those who have such good intentions see their marriage turn into a royal mess and end up divorced. I do not understand my own actions.

No one wants to become slave to an addiction, be it alcohol, drugs, sex, pornography, eating, smoking or gambling. We all know that such addictions are bad for us and we have good intentions of either preventing them or overcoming them. But like moths drawn to a flame, we find ourselves drawn back to them time and again until we are burned and our addictions mock our good intentions. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand.

No parent wants to commit the same mistakes his or her parents made or do the very things as parents that they hated their parents doing when they were children. And yet how many times have we stopped and said, “Oh my God, I sound just like my father or mother?” Or, “I can’t believe I just did the very thing I swore I would never do as a parent.” I do the very thing I hate.

We want to be a mature Christian who has control of our tongues, but within hours of praying for self-control we can find ourselves cursing at the person who just cut us off or yelling at the waitress who is slow with our food.  For I can will what is right, but I cannot do it.

We want to treat people with kindness and respect, but who has not gossiped about another person behind his or her back and relished the rumor that is going around about someone we are not wild about? For I do not do what I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.

We seek to be a people of peace and yet find our anger bursts forth from us like that of the Incredible Hulk and we don’t recognize the monster we have become. I see in my members another law at war with my mind.

Paul has put his finger on the human condition—even for Christians. Why is it that we are like this? Why can’t our good intentions simply result in good actions? Why do we always end up in a mess? Paul identified the culprit: But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me.

Paul says that our actions are tainted because we are tainted. There is something rotten at our core called sin. Sin is an inevitable inclination to act selfishly, or stupidly or self-destructively.

There is something in our DNA that goes all the way back to Adam and Eve that causes us to do the very things we know we should not do and do not even want to do, but we do them anyways. We eat the apple, knowing full well that we shouldn’t eat it and that eating it will result in a curse.

Theologian Paul Tillich wrote: “It is our human predicament that a power takes hold of us, that does not come to us but is in us, a power that we hate and at the same time gladly accept. We are fascinated by it; we play with it; we obey it…We are fascinated by what can destroy us, and in moments even feel a hidden desire to be destroyed by it.”

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote the classic horror novel, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. It is the story of a doctor who drinks a potion he’s concocted that turns him for a time into Mr. Hyde, a self-centered monster. Eventually, the good doctor finds that the more he drinks the potion the harder it becomes to banish Mr. Hyde from his life. Someone once asked Stevenson where he found the model for the story’s principal character. The author replied, “I found it in my nature.”

Every human being is to some degree a Jekyll and Hyde. We are not one complete person. There’s a part of us that tries to do right and another part of us that desires to do wrong.

·        We love God, but we don’t obey God.

·        We believe in honesty but don’t think twice about cheating to gain an advantage.

·        We want to be faithful to our spouse but lust after a co-worker.

·        We want to be grateful for our blessings but covet what our neighbor has.

·        We want to be generous in our giving to those less fortunate unless it interferes with something we want for ourselves.

Paul sums it all up when he cries out, “Wretched man that I am!”  Wretched means miserable, shameful, dejected. Have your actions ever left you feeling ashamed of yourself? 

How many leaves have you turned over determined to not commit the same errors, make the same bad decisions, do the same self-destructive actions only to spoil all those new leaves? We know that we are not who we ought to be and that we have not done what we should have done. We beat ourselves over the head with oughts and shoulds until we cry out with Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?”

Amy, 15, had always gotten straight “A’s” in school, and so her parents were extremely upset when she got a “B” on her report card. “If I fail in what I do,” Amy told her parents, “I fail in what I am.” That message was part of Amy’s suicide note. The problem is that we always fail in what we do and so that must mean that we are always a failure in who we are.

How can we ever escape the fact that we are not worthy? How do we ever escape this human condition that so distorts our best intentions? How do we escape from our penchant to sin that colors everything we do a shade of putrid? 

After Paul cries out his words of desperation, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” he goes on to exclaim two of the greatest lines in all of Scripture: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord...There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”

Breathe deeply the freedom of those lines. There is only one perfect human being who ever walked this earth and it isn’t me and it isn’t you. It is Jesus Christ. And the amazing thing about his life and death is that God sent him because we can’t be perfect but if we accept Jesus into our life then God promises to forgive our imperfections and accept Christ’s perfection as our own.

Amy didn’t have to die because she wasn’t perfect. It’s not what we do, but what has been done for us that gives our lives meaning and purpose. If we think our salvation and worth depend upon what we do, then we have fallen into the old works righteousness trap where salvation depends upon our actions. If that is the case then we are all wretches most to be pitied because we will not make it.

Paul says that for the Christian there is to be no more condemnation!

No more depression or guilt over being less than we should be. No more believing we are a failure because we fail in our actions. No more holding ourselves up to impossible standards or living with constant blame over what we should have done but failed to do.

I have a minister friend who has a saying on his office wall that reads: “I will not should on myself today.” When I asked him what that meant, he said that we can always think that we should be better than we are and never escape from a sense of failure and guilt. But because Paul said that there is now no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus, he is finished condemning himself for what he should be and his motivation for living is no longer shame and guilt but the good news that he is accepted and loved by God.

Our worth is not determined by our As in life, but determined by our faith in Jesus Christ. Hold onto faith and no matter how bad a mess we have gotten into, it is always possible to confess it, repent from it and find forgiveness and power to start anew.

Remember six year-old Brandon, who wanted to make pancakes for his parents but ended upon making only a huge mess? When we last left him we was standing in the middle of the mess with egg all over him when his father appeared at the door. Big crocodile tears welled up in Brandon’s eyes. All he’d wanted to do was something good, but he’s made a terrible mess of it. He was sure a scolding was coming, or worse, maybe even a spanking.

But his father just watched him. Then, walking through the mess, he picked up his crying son, hugged him and loved him, getting his own pajamas white and sticky in the process! Then he got a towel and began to clean up Brandon and clean up the mess he made. Such is the rescue we receive from Jesus Christ.

Everybody struggles. We all have this inner conflict of not being who we know we ought to be and doing what we don’t want. We are not perfect and are not meant to be. While our calling is to never stop trying to make the pancakes of our good intentions, we must never become discouraged when we end up in a mess. So long as we do not forsake our faith, Christ will rescue us from the mess, clean us up and send us forth to try again.

The Word today is that even though we do what we don’t want, we receive what we don’t deserve—the amazing grace and underserved love of our savior Jesus Christ. Let us join with the Apostle Paul in his great cry of relief, Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

AMEN.