The Danger of Coveting Honor - Romans 7

1. A Prayer for the People of God
We rejoice, O Christ,
for in your tender compassion
you shoulder our burdens
and ease our heavy hearts.
Give us the strength
to carry each other
as you have carried us.
Amen.

2. Coronavirus Sunday #17
The COVID-19 Calendar

3. The Church Calendar
July 5

4. Romans 7:15-25a
The DANGER of COVETING Honor

5. - Predominantly Gentile believers
in Jesus as Messiah/King
- Don’t observe the Torah
as God’s will for their lives;
grace is through the Spirit
- Have a condescending/despising
attitude towards Jewish believers
- Those in the majority in the
Roman house churches
THE “STRONG” of ROMANS

6. - Predominantly Jewish
- Know/practice the Torah, attend
synagogue; both = means of grace
- Sit in judgment over Gentiles,
especially the Strong in the Christian
community (even though they have
no real status or
power outside the church)
- Those in the minority in the
Roman house churches
THE “WEAK” of ROMANS

7. QUESTIONS TO ASK…
- Who is the “I” Paul refers to?
* Current or Pre-Christian Paul?
* Personified “Judge”?
* Personified Israel?

8. QUESTIONS TO ASK…
- Who is the “I” Paul refers to?
* Current or Pre-Christian Paul?
* Personified “Judge”?
* Personified Israel?
- What is the “I” struggling with?
* Tempted by physical appetites?
* Failure to keep the Law of Moses?
* Breaking the 10th commandment
while faithfully keeping the Law?

9. QUESTIONS TO ASK…
- Who is the “I” Paul refers to?
* Current or Pre-Christian Paul?
* Personified “Judge”?
* Personified Israel?
- What is the “I” struggling with?
* Tempted by physical appetites?
* Failure to keep the Law of Moses?
* Breaking the 10th commandment
while faithfully keeping the Law?

10. QUESTIONS TO ASK…
- Who is the “I” Paul refers to?
* Current or Pre-Christian Paul?
* Personified “Judge”?
* Personified Israel?
- What is the “I” struggling with?
* Tempted by physical appetites?
* Failure to keep the Law of Moses?
* Breaking 10th commandment
but still keeping the Law?

11. ROBERT JEWETT
The sin of asserting one’s group
at the expense of others fits the
intensely competitive environment
of Greco-Roman and Jewish culture
(and the context of Paul’s letter) …
It’s not the sin of disobedience,
as in the Genesis account, but the
sin of legalistic zealotism that leads
to the death that Paul has in mind…

12. ROBERT JEWETT
When law is employed in the effort to
dominate others and to earn superior
status before God, its holy purpose is
perverted and it leads to death rather
than life…zealous advocacy of what one
side conceives as right often produces
the opposite, and the
quest for superior status makes conflicts
more irresolvable.

13. BRIAN HAMILTON
According to early Christian theologian
Thomas Aquinas, it’s our reason that grasps
a thing as good, and then proposes that
good to our will as something worth
choosing. If our
reason is wrong about what’s good,
our will is bound to be wrong too
(and we probably won’t recognize
it in the process, which leads to great anguish
if/when we recognize it later!)

14. ROBERT JEWETT
It is not that Paul proved unable
to obey the law, but that his very
obedience achieved the opposite
of its intended effect…this indwelling
sin transforms obedience into a means
of status acquisition and thus produces
the disastrous contradiction between
what is intended and what is
actually achieved.

15. Romans 7:15-25a
The DANGER of COVETING Honor

16. I don’t understand what I do. I don’t do
what I want, you see, but I do what I hate.
So if I do what I don’t want to do, I am
agreeing that the law is good. But now it is
no longer I that do it; it is sin living within
me.
I know, you see, that no good thing lives in
me, that is, in my human flesh. For I can will
the good, but I can’t perform it. For I don’t
do
ROMANS 7:15-19 (KNT)

17. So if I do what I don’t want to do, it’s no
longer “I” doing it; it is sin living inside me.
This, then, is what I find about the law:
when I want to do what is right, evil lies
close at hand. I delight in God’s law, you
see, according to my inmost self; but I see
another “law” in my limbs and organs,
fighting a battle against the law of my
mind, and taking me
as a prisoner in the law of sin which is in
ROMANS 7:20-23 (KNT)

18. What a miserable person I am!
Who is going to rescue me
from the body of this death?
Thank God – through Jesus
our King and Lord!
ROMANS 7:24-25a (KNT)

19. THOUGHTS to CONSIDER
- Coveting honor/status – before God
and our fellow humans – always leads
to death in one way or another

20. - Coveting honor/status – before God
and our fellow humans – always leads
to death in one way or another
THOUGHTS to CONSIDER

21. - Coveting honor/status – before God
and our fellow humans – always leads
to death in one way or another
- We are both perpetrator/victim,
needing conviction of conscience,
repentance, and compassion
THOUGHTS to CONSIDER

22. - Coveting honor/status – before God
and our fellow humans – always leads
to death in one way or another
- We are both perpetrator/victim,
needing conviction of conscience,
repentance, and compassion
- Our hope rests in Jesus, both in what he
has done, and in what he is doing
THOUGHTS to CONSIDER

23. Romans 7:15-25a
The DANGER of COVETING Honor

24. Closing Prayer
Almighty and ever-living God,
ruler of all things in heaven and earth,
hear our prayers for the Vintage family.
Strengthen the faithful, arouse the careless,
and restore the penitent. Grant us all things
necessary for our common life, and bring
us all to be of one heart and mind within
your holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.