It's All About Victory - Romans 7

In all history nations [especially the weaker ones] have struggled against the threat of being over run and even destroyed by ungodly governments of the super powers. In our recent studies of Jeremiah. We learned of the demise of Judah and Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonians. And then in AD 70, Rome destroyed the city again. It has been over 2000 years now, and the total return of a complete country with specific boundaries has still not been re-established. There are literally hundreds of examples of the rise and fall of nations.

I was 18 years old when I graduated from High School in April of 1943 and had already volunteered for the Air Corps, knowing that we had been at war with the Nazis in Europe and the Japanese in the Pacific since they bombed Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 and that I was sure to be drafted soon. At my age, my memory is not as sharp as it once was, but I well remember D-Day, June 6, 1944. Things had not been going well for the US and her allies in Europe, and the successful invasion of Normandy [although very costly in lives lost] was the first real glimmer of Victory over our enemies in WWII. This was the largest invasion effort ever attempted in any war and involved over 150 thousand soldiers and more than 175 thousand Marines and Naval personnel. Although battles continued to rage until the war was over in May, 1945, our hope for VICTORY was never as dim as it had been before the invasion.

All of these examples, both named and referred to, are mere skirmishes in comparison to the greatest threat ever to invade the world and that would be the invasion of sin into the life of each person that would ever live in this sinful world. The price [or result] of sin is death, and therefore man was doomed until God sent his Son to provide a way of escape…a way to VICTORY. The death of Jesus Christ on the Cross overshadows the deaths of all the soldiers in all the wars of all times and provides each of us a door to complete and eternal VICTORY.

When sin entered the world God gave man a right to choose how he would live his life, however, God maintained complete authority to determine what is right or Godly and what is wrong or sinful. It therefore became necessary for God to provide a way for man to decide or know what was righteous and what was evil, and he provided his law and revealed it through His priest and prophets. The Ten Commandments formed the basis, they were carved in stone and written on scrolls and delivered to His people. God’s laws were never meant to save man from sin; but they were given so that man could know right from wrong. God’s people lived under and by these laws for over 4,000 years and dedicated people came to believe that their eternal life depended upon their keeping of the law.

One of, if not the greatest problem, that Paul and the other apostles and teachers of the New Testament age had was to convince the Jews that salvation comes only through Jesus Christ and his grace, through their faith and not of works [and not of keeping the law]. Paul shows that the law is powerless to save the sinner but that the law is not a sin in itself; rather it is the school master that taught him that he was a sinner. He said, “I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, ‘do not covet.’ The sinner is condemned by the law; the law keeper can not live up to it—and the person with the new nature finds his or her obedience to law sabotaged by the effects of the old sinful nature.

Last Sunday our teacher said that he sometimes thinks that many ministers and teachers make the salvation experience sound too easy; just believe on the Lord and be saved…period. Paul surely confirms that belief here because he is saying that we are saved by trusting in Christ but after that there are many things given n law that one must do in order to be obedient to Gods command…Not to be saved; But to be obedient after one is saved. It seems very evident here that ‘keeping the law’ and ‘doing good works’ are both absolutely necessary not to gain salvation but to prove that we are believers.

Paul said that he was a slave to sin. In verse 15 he said, “I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. Then he said that the confusion comes because he still has the sinful nature that he has to deal with each day. The law only tells him what his sins are and reminds him when he is out of line…and that is the purpose of the law. But when he wants forgiveness for those sins, he must go back to Jesus Christ, who is the only source of forgiveness.

In closing of the lesson, I am made to wonder if there is any way to lead people to see sin as an evader of earth and even more devastating that the invasion of France and Belgium by the Nazis. And then even more important, is there any way for Christian people to lead the world to see the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ as the one battle that brought victory to the world. We emphasize the importance of the lives of our soldiers that have given their lives for America’s freedom [and we should] but so often we forget the sacrifice our Lord made for our souls.