I don't think that your total view of the Christian life has to be ruined by getting one text wrong.

In other words, you could choose wrong on this text and have an absolutely

excellent understanding of the Christian life as a total because there's so many other

passages that ought to feed into your understanding of the Christian life.

Is Romans 7 14 to 25 describing a Christian or a non-Christian?

In this episode of Light and Truth, John Piper shows how God's righteousness in Christ

transforms our view both of sin and the law, regardless of the answer. This sermon was

originally delivered at Bethlehem Baptist Church on May 27, 2001. This is one of the most famous and one of the most controversial texts in the book of

Romans. It's got this famous verse 19 in it. The good that I want to do, I do not do, but I

practice the very evil that I do not want. So we have a kind of divided man here,

right, a divided heart or mind. He says, there's part of me, he calls it I, who wants to do good,

doesn't want to do evil. And then he says, there's another part of me. He calls it I,

who does not do the good that I want, but does the evil I don't want. And the controversy around this text is, who is this man? That is, is it Paul the Christian or Paul the pre-Christian?

Or maybe more precisely, is it the morally conscience awakened pre-conversion Paul through the eyes of faith?

Or is it the baby Christian carnal Paul before fullness?

Or is it the mature Paul in a lapse condition of temporary failure?

Now the biblical commentators spread out all over the map on these interpretations

and I'm not going to tell you

this morning, which I think is correct, but I will later. What I want to do this morning is prepare

you to handle this ambiguity and then tell you why I think the main point of the text doesn't

depend on it.

So first, what do you do with it?

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