{"id":4316,"date":"2022-05-19T02:59:00","date_gmt":"2022-05-19T02:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4316"},"modified":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-10-02T01:34:11","slug":"a-good-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/?p=4316","title":{"rendered":"A GOOD START"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">163,000 people beat me to a sermon from John MacArthur on YouTube regarding Romans 7:14-24 &#8211; Paul&#8217;s famous &#8220;What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do &#8230; this I keep on doing&#8221; passage.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MacArthur makes the case that these verses present a picture of Paul&#8217;s actual struggles as a Christian, not the internal dialogue of someone who is almost a Christian.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">(If you are not familiar with MacArthur, he is a prominent Reformed Baptist preacher with a wide following.)<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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:<\/p>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>There is too much bondage to sin to represent a believer.<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Where is the fruit of the Spirit?<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Many of the <b>preceding <\/b>verses speak of victory over sin, with any struggle in the past tense:<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n\n<li>Other verses speak of a new way forward, after gaining victory over sin:<\/li>\n\n<\/ul>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">MacArthur observes: &#8220;All of these passages seem to say sin is dethroned.&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">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.<\/p>\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But MacArthur fails to stop there. Tomorrow I will share what he considers a strong reason to overturn all of this context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>163,000 people beat me to a sermon from John MacArthur on YouTube regarding Romans 7:14-24 &#8211; Paul&#8217;s famous &#8220;What I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do &#8230; this I keep on doing&#8221; passage.\u00a0 MacArthur makes the case that these verses present a picture [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4316","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4316"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4317,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4316\/revisions\/4317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4316"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4316"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4316"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}