Sigmund and Paul (Romans 7:14 - 25a)

     About a quarter of the New Testament was either written by Paul, or written in his name by one of his followers, so his influence on Christianity has been enormous.  All of his writings are letters, and most are in response to specific situations. Galatians, for example, was written in response to teachings that it was necessary to be circumscribed to be a Christian. First Corinthians was written because some in that church were getting too big for their britches, thinking they were already exalted, and above everybody else because of it. Only Romans – our present letter – appears not to have been written about a specific problem. Paul was planning to visit the Roman church, and meant this letter to be an introduction, a kind of a statement of his theology. Our passage is part of a larger discussion on how he views the law, which in this case means the Mosaic law, which all Jews were bound to obey.

And this discussion betrays a deep ambivalence on Paul’s part – he views the law as holy, and in fact, he says he delights in the law, at least in his innermost self . . . it’s his other parts – his members, whatever those are – that are the problem. In fact, he says, he sees in those members another law at work, a sinister law at war with the law of his innermost self – and this other law wins, and makes him a captive, a prisoner of war, to this law of sin that dwells in his body. And it’s this personification of sin that’s key to understanding this passage, for it is sin pictured as a malevolent entity that has entered Paul’s body like a marauding army.

But what does sin actually do? How does it invade its target, which is Paul’s body? Earlier in the argument, he makes the astonishing claim that sin actually uses the law against us – the law, which we think produces life, actually is perverted by sin to produce death. He says “the very commandment” – that's the law – “that promised life proved to be death to me” – and it's important to realize that while he personalizes everything for emphasis, he means it to describe the human condition. His confessional tone masks a finely-honed argument. He says that “sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment” – and again he means the law – “deceived me and through it killed me.” And what did it deceive him about?  The life-giving nature of the law – that just by obeying the law, or rather, trying to obey it, life will be the result.  Relying on the law, instead of God’s free gift of grace, is tantamount to idolatry, but the idol isn't some tree god or wooden statue, but we ourselves – in our insistence that by following some set of rules, we can justify ourselves, and so void the need for grace.

Amazingly, though, it is through the law that sin obliterates us – “If it had not been for the law,” Paul says, “I would not have known sin.”  It gets its foothold through the law – if the commandment had not said “thou shalt not covet,” we would not have known what it is to covet. But it’s not some lame excuse for doing bad things, some easy “you’re not sinning if you don’t know it’s a sin” . . . for Paul, sin is actively at work in the commandments, in the law, producing, for example, all manner of covetousness, all manner of desire.

And so that’s where we stand at the opening of our passage. It’s not that the law is bad – after all, that’s holy, that’s from God. It’s that sin takes the law and perverts it and uses it. And now Paul seems to get even more intense, even more personal “I do not understand my own actions,” he says – “I do not do what I want, but the very thing that I hate.” He knows that the law is good, and he doesn't get it – why does trying to live up to it turn out so badly? The results are unmistakable – he doesn't do what he wants, he doesn't stop coveting, for instance, but ends up doing what he hates, he ends up coveting all the more.

And it's interesting that the lectionary begins where it begins, and doesn't include the first part of the argument, and I think that this is just the place modern interpreters veer off into the ozone a little bit . . . we tend to look at it through modern eyes, as if it’s simply a personal confession, and not a theological discussion about sin and the law. And because it sounds so plaintive and personal we overlay our own modern angst upon it, and view it in psychological categories. It's as if some psychiatrist – we’ll call him Sigmund – has got Paul on the couch:

Paul says “I do not understand my own actions . . . I do the very thing I hate.”

Sigmund strokes his beard and pushes his glasses further up on his nose.  “Aha!” he says, “Something deep within you is at work, here . . . deep within what we call your subconscious. It is very interesting . . . go on.”

“Well . . .  it’s like it's no longer I that do these things, these things I hate, but sin that dwells within me . . .”

And Sigmund says “Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . what is this ‘sin?’ Is it a thing, or a person, is it something you do, some kind of a force of nature, what?”

“Well,” Paul says, “It is kind of like a person . . .  I feel it living within me, in my body . . . and it’s doing these things I hate, making me do them, and it’s not me . . .”

“Did you ever see the movie Alien? Never mind . . . that is a joke . . . well, what we seem to have here is a classic case of my theory . . . this sin you say is deep within you, this is what we call the id. They are your deepest desires, what drives you to seek pleasure – all coming from sex, I might add – and the shapes they take are formed by events and people early in your life, so early that often you do not remember, but I can assure you they were there. Tell me – what was your mother like?”

“She was nice . . . very kind and loving . . .”

“Obviously, you are repressing . . . because of these childhood traumas, these urges seem foreign to you, like something dwelling within you . . . you call it sin, but I can assure you, it is part of you.”

Paul says “But I seem to know what to do, but just can’t do it.”

“Ah. That is what we call the super-ego, also coming from childhood experience. And it is at war with the id, it is like tanks and guns and planes,” and Sigmund makes shooting motions and Ack, Ack sounds, saying “and then the U.N. Peacekeeper – the ego, your conscious self – it tries to mediate, but becomes neurotic and compulsive, and it says bad things without even thinking . . .”

“But where is God in all of this?”  asks Paul.

“God?  God?  What is this God?  It is all in yourself . . .” He looks at his watch “but, I am sorry . . . Your time is up . . .”

      Modern psychology tends to locate everything within us, as intrinsic to us, as a part of us, and that is simply incompatible with Paul’s worldview. Paul very clearly believes in evil as an entity, as a force, and he calls it sin. Never sins, as in things that we do . . . to Paul, doing bad things is the result of sin, not the thing itself, and sin is an independent force of evil.

And so we have two competing worldviews, seemingly irreconcilable. One sees the evil we do as the result of an outside power, and although it may invade our bodies, is nevertheless foreign to them. In the other view, internalized experience is the driving force, all the interactions between ourselves and others – mainly our parents – and our bad behavior is the result of trying to cope with it all, trying to make our way in the world in spite of all we have gone through.

And I don’t know for sure, but I bet a lot of us read this passage from the second perspective, which, after all, is the modern one . . . it explains an observable phenomenon – the propensity we have for doing things we know are wrong – in nicely rational, scientific terms . . . and certainly, it fits what we’ve learned in the past hundred years about the way families and other social structures operate. For instance, we know now that many – but not all – pedophiles were themselves molested as children, but we don’t have to be so extreme. Most of us remember hurtful things done to us as children, things that we find ourselves doing today, even though we hate them now as much as we did back then. Family therapists tell us that behavioral pathologies are passed down from generation to generation like a bad cold.

And if we read Paul that way, it is comforting, in a warm and fuzzy way . . . “Oh, look,” we say, “He understands.  He gets it after all.”  He must not be as cold, or as sexist – or whatever we’ve projected back onto him – as we thought. “I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” Right on Paul! Amen! We’ve all been there. And there’s nothing wrong with reading it this way. After all, Paul was human, and he doubtlessly drew on his own experience to write this passage.

But if that’s the only way we read it, if we treat it as some quaint, pre-scientific way of looking at evil, and interpret it as a rare example of Pauline empathy, we miss the depth of Paul’s argument, and the power in what he says. For what he’s describing is the power of evil to use Mosaic law – instituted by God, handed down by God, created by God – against the people of God. The power of evil – which he calls sin – uses a creation of God to produce death, instead of life, which is what God wants for us all.

And that’s the question – how can something created by God, as scripture insists is the case for Mosaic law, how can something created by God be turned to evil in the end? And it happens not just within Mosaic law, but in many other things as well. Take churches, for example . . . as much as we’d like not to believe it, some churches are pathological, some produce nothing in the way of life; when you walk into them you feel only the hurt and pain and, finally, death. And yet, the church is created by God, scripture is very clear about that . . . how or what can turn something good so that evil is the result?

The easy answer, the one you always hear, is that it’s people who do it. Human beings are not perfect, and if they get their hands on it, they’ll inevitably muck it up. But people were created by God just like the church and the law . . . and just like those things, they were created good. It says so right there in Genesis one. And so if people are the culprits the question is the same: how or what can turn something

Well, the answer is . . . I don't know. It's the old, old question of “the problem of evil,” rearing its ugly head. All theological systems – from Reformed to Lutheran to Wesleyan – have ways of thinking about it, but none are, in the end, satisfactory. Over on the secular side, psychiatry creates theories of personality and the mind – we've had a little fun with Freud's version – but none are complete, none are entirely satisfactory in the end.

What we do know is this . . . what Paul calls sin can corrupt God’s good creation, and Paul takes us to the point of desperation over it. “Wretched man that I am,” he says, “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” And we can hear the despair, feel the hopelessness and desperation in the face of evil . . . Who will do it? Who will rescue us from our bondage to death?

And suddenly Paul shifts from despondency to joy, from lament to thanksgiving. It seems as if it just breaks in to the argument, as if he is not entirely in control . . . “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Of course, he has the answer – we have the answer! Who will rescue us from our bondage to evil? God will, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Through the Christ event, through the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are rescued from the law of sin . . . and the good news is in that one little word . . . rescue. It's as if we're foundering at sea, sinking into the cold depths, and Christ the rescue-diver pulls us to the surface. Or we're passed out in a burning, smoke-filled room, flames licking at our feet, and Christ the fireman slings us over his shoulder and carries us to safety. We have been rescued, set free, cut loose from the net of sin.

But in our Presbyterian theology salvation extends beyond justification . . . it extends to physical rescue as well . . . And so we might well ask: Who will rebuild us, restore us renew us once again, after the storm?  God will, through Jesus Christ our Lord! 

I don't know the mechanics of it, I don't know the science or the science fiction of it, all I know is what is true . . . the spirit of life in Christ Jesus has set us free from the law of sin and death.  Thanks be to God!  Amen.