We end the week, Pastor John, with a topic that dawned on me recently, not long ago, was

editing a powerful sermon clip, taken from your sermon series in Romans 7, verses 14 to 25,

applying what it means to be a Christian who lives with disordered desires in our hearts.

There's a sermon clip sent to us from a woman in Greece who struggled for years with an

eating disorder, who chose to open up and tell others about her sin, only after having

heard your pastoral conclusion to sermon number five, I believe it was. It's an amazing

clip and a powerful listener testimony that we published about a month ago in ABJ 1751.

But when I researched that clip and set it up for the podcast, I noticed we've never

entered into the debate over Romans 7 here on the podcast. Is this the struggle of Christian

Paul or is it the struggle of pre-Christian Saul? Several times here in the podcast, you've said

it's a believer struggle like an ABJ's 802, 1183, 1438, etc. And then you built from this stated

conclusion, but you've never defended that position in ABJ and I'd love to hear you do. So how would

you frame the disagreement and why do you land on the side of Romans 7 describing the believer's

struggle? The disagreement about Romans 7, 14 to 25 is whether Paul is describing some

dimension of his Christian experience or whether he's describing his pre-Christian experience

of defeat as he tried to keep the law and he's describing it now from his perspective as a Christian.

Now my view is that Romans 7, 14, 25 is a description of the kind of experiences Paul often had as a

Christian and that we often have. And I say often had because I don't want to give the impression

that those verses describe the totality of Christian experience. Now this disagreement among

really good friends, right? You and I could name really good friends that just don't see I'd

on this and I love those brothers don't consider this disagreement as a ground for any kind of

breaking of a relationship or a fellowship. The disagreement exists because on the one hand,

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