163,000 people beat me to a sermon from John MacArthur on YouTube regarding Romans 7:14-24 – Paul’s famous “What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do … this I keep on doing” passage.
MacArthur makes the case that these verses present a picture of Paul’s actual struggles as a Christian, not the internal dialogue of someone who is almost a Christian.
(If you are not familiar with MacArthur, he is a prominent Reformed Baptist preacher with a wide following.)
I appreciate the fact that MacArthur begins his sermon by acknowledging the arguments that favor reading this passage as the inner struggle of a non-Christian:
- There is too much bondage to sin to represent a believer.
- Where is the fruit of the Spirit?
- Many of the preceding verses speak of victory over sin, with any struggle in the past tense:
- Other verses speak of a new way forward, after gaining victory over sin:
MacArthur observes: “All of these passages seem to say sin is dethroned.”
If he stopped right there, I would say this was a good sermon. To me, that looks like a pretty compelling case in favor of viewing 7:14-24 as the struggle of a person who is not yet a Christian.
But MacArthur fails to stop there. Tomorrow I will share what he considers a strong reason to overturn all of this context.
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