- Overcomer Literature Trust
- Swindon
- Wiltshire
“WHAT A WRETCHED MAN I AM!”
By Andrew Murray
“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom. 7 v24-25).
This text stands at the end of Romans chapter seven as the gateway into the eighth. In the first sixteen verses of the eighth chapter the name of the Holy Spirit is found sixteen times. We have here the description and promise of the life that a child of God can live in the power of the Holy Spirit, beginning in the second verse, “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life has set me free from the law of sin and death”. From there Paul goes on to speak of the great privileges of the child of God who is led by the Spirit of God. The gateway into this is in the twenty fourth verse of the seventh chapter, “What a wretched man I am”. Here you have the words of one who has come to the end of himself. He has in the previous verses described how he had struggled and wrestled in his own power to obey the holy law of God and had failed. But in answer to his own question he now finds the true answer and cries out, “Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord”.
“You did not receive a spirit that makes you a slave again to fear”. We are warned that to go again into slavery is a great danger in the Christian life and I want to describe the way by which we can get out of slavery into the glorious liberty of the children of God.
These words are the language of a regenerate person, of an impotent person, of a wretched person and of one on the borders of complete liberty.
1. We have here the words of a regenerate person. “It is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me”. This is the language of one who knows that their heart and nature have been renewed and that sin is now a power in them that is not of themselves. “In my inner being I delight in God’s law” is again the language of a regenerate person. They dare to say, when they do evil, “It is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it”. It is very important to understand this.
In the first two great sections of the epistle Paul deals with justification and sanctification. In dealing with justification he lays the foundation of the teaching about sin, not in the singular ‘sin’, but in the plural ‘sins’, the actual transgressions. In the second part of the fifth chapter he begins to deal with sin, not as actual transgression but as a power. What a loss it would have been to us if Paul had omitted in his teaching this vital question of sinfulness in the believer. The regenerate person is one in whom the will has been renewed and who can say, “In my inner being I delight in God’s law”.
2. The regenerate person is also an impotent person. Here is the great mistake made by many. They think that when there is a renewed will that is enough. We often hear, ‘You have a new will and if you set yourself determinedly you can perform what you will’. But this regenerate man was as determined as any one can be and yet he made the confession, “I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out”.
How is it God makes this regenerate man who has a right will, with a heart that longs to do good and longs to do its very utmost to love God, utter such a confession? Our will is nothing but an empty vessel in which the power of God is to be made manifest. We must seek in God all that we are to be. It is in Philippians chapter two and we have it here also, that God’s work is to work in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. Here is a man who appears to say, ‘God has not worked in me’. But we are taught that God works both to will and to do. How is the apparent contradiction to be reconciled?
You will find in Romans 7 v6-25 the name of the Holy Spirit does not occur once, nor does the name of Christ. The man is wrestling and struggling to fulfil God’s law. Instead of the Holy Spirit and of Christ, the law is mentioned nearly twenty times. It shows a believer doing his very best to obey the law of God with his regenerate will. Not only this, but you will find the little words, ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, occur more than forty times. It is the regenerate ‘I’ in its impotence seeking to obey the law without being filled with the Spirit. This is the experience of almost every saint. After conversion we, so often, begin to do our best and we fail.
God allows this failure that the regenerate person should be taught their own utter impotence. It is in the course of this struggle that there comes to us this sense of our utter sinfulness. It is God’s way of dealing with us. He allows that we strive to fulfil the law, that, as we strive and wrestle we may be brought to this, ‘I am a regenerate child of God, but I am utterly helpless to obey His law’. See what strong words are used all through the chapter to describe this condition, “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin”, “I see another law at work in the members of my body . . . making me a prisoner of the law of sin” and last of all, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” This believer who bows here in deep contrition is utterly unable to obey the law of God.
3. Not only is the one who makes this confession a regenerate and an impotent person but also a wretched person. Utterly unhappy and miserable because God has given them a nature that longs to love God, they are deeply wretched because they feel that they are not obeying God. They say, with brokenness of heart, ‘It is not I that do it, but I am under the awful power of sin which is holding me down. It is I and yet not I. Alas, it is myself, so closely am I bound up with it and so closely is it intertwined with my very nature’. Blessed be God when we learn to say, “What a wretched man I am” from the depth of our heart.
There are many who make this confession a pillow for sin. ‘If Paul had to confess his weakness and helplessness in this way, who am I that I should try to do better?’ So the call to holiness is quietly set aside. Would God that every one of us had learned to say these words in the spirit in which they are written here. When we hear sin spoken of as the abominable thing that God hates do not many of us wince? Would that all Christians who go on sinning would take this verse to heart. If ever you utter a sharp word say, “What a wretched man I am!” And every time you lose your temper, kneel down and understand that God never meant that this was to be the state in which you, His child, should remain. Would God that we would take this word into our daily life and say it every time we are touched about our honour, and every time we say sharp things, and every time we sin against the Lord God and against the Lord Jesus Christ in His humility, and in His obedience, and in His self-sacrifice. Would to God you could forget everything else and cry out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” Why should you say this whenever you commit sin? Because it is when we are brought to this confession that deliverance is at hand.
It is not only the sense of being impotent and taken captive that makes us wretched, but the sense of sinning against God. The law was doing its work, making sin exceeding sinful. The thought of continually grieving God becomes utterly unbearable and it is this that brings forth the piercing cry, “What a wretched man!” As long as we talk and reason about our impotence and our failure and only try to find out what Romans 7 means it will profit us little, but once every sin gives new intensity to the sense of wretchedness and we feel our whole state as one of not only helplessness but actual exceeding sinfulness, we shall be pressed not only to ask, ‘Who will rescue me?’ but to cry, ‘Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ my Lord’.
4. When we come to this point we are on the very brink of deliverance. We have tried to love and obey the beautiful law of God, we have wept over sin and tried to conquer, to overcome fault after fault, but every time we have ended in failure. So what does Paul mean by “the body of this death”? In the eighth chapter you have the answer to this question in the words, “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live”. That is the body of death from which he is seeking deliverance. And now he is on the brink of deliverance. In the twenty-third verse of the seventh chapter we have the words, “I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members”. It is a captive that cries, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” He is a man who feels himself bound, but look to the contrast in the second verse of the eighth chapter, “Through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death”. That is the deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord, the liberty to the captive which the Spirit brings.
But had not the regenerate man the Spirit of Jesus when he spoke in the sixth chapter? Yes, but he did not know what the Holy Spirit could do for him. God does not work by His Spirit as He works by a blind force in nature. He leads His people on as reasonable, intelligent beings and therefore when He wants to give us that Holy Spirit whom He has promised, He brings us first to the end of self, to the conviction that though we have been striving to obey the law we have failed. When we have come to the end of ourselves, then He shows us that in the Holy Spirit we have the power of obedience, the power of victory and the power of real holiness.
God works to will and He is ready to do, but alas, many Christians misunderstand this. They think that because they have the will it is enough. This is not so. The new will is a permanent gift, an attribute of the new nature, but the power to do is not a permanent gift and must be, each moment, received from the Holy Spirit. It is the one who is conscious of their own impotence as a believer who will learn that by the Holy Spirit they can live a holy life. This one is on the brink of that great deliverance and the way has been prepared for the glorious eighth chapter.
Where are you living? Is it, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me?” with now and then a little experience of the power of the Holy Spirit? Or is it, “Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ”, “the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of the spirit of sin and death”?
What the Holy Spirit does is to give the victory. “If by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live”. It is the Holy Spirit who does this. He it is who, when the heart is opened wide to receive Him, comes in and reigns there, and puts to death the misdeeds of the body, day by day, hour by hour, and moment by moment.
Remember, there are in Scripture two very different sorts of Christians. The Bible speaks in Romans, Corinthians, and Galatians about yielding to the flesh, and that is the life of tens of thousands of believers. All their lack of joy in the Holy Spirit and their lack of the liberty He gives, is owing to the flesh. The Spirit is within them, but the flesh rules the life. To be led by the Spirit of God is what they need. Would God that every child of His could realise what it means that the everlasting God has given His dear Son, Christ Jesus, to watch over you every day, and that what you have to do is to trust? And that the work of the Holy Spirit is to enable you every moment to remember Jesus and to trust Him. The Spirit has come to keep the link with Him unbroken every moment. Praise God for the Holy Spirit. We are so accustomed to think of the Holy Spirit as a luxury, something for special times or for special people. But the Holy Spirit is necessary for every believer, every moment of the day. Praise God you have Him, and that He gives you the full experience of the deliverance in Christ as He makes you free from the power of sin.
Bow before God in one final cry of despair, ‘O God, must I go on sinning this way for ever? Who will rescue me, wretched man that I am, from this body of death?’ Are you ready to sink before God and seek the power of Jesus to dwell and work in you? Are you ready to say, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ”?
What good does it do that we go to church, that we study our Bibles and pray, unless our lives are filled with the Holy Spirit? That is what God wants and nothing else will enable you to live a life of power and peace. Alas, how many Christians are content with the question, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” but never give the answer. Instead of saying, “Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord”, they are for ever repeating the question without the answer. If you want the way to the full deliverance of Christ and the liberty of the Spirit, the glorious liberty of the children of God, take it through the seventh chapter of the Romans and then say, “Thanks be to God - through Jesus Christ our Lord”. Be not content to remain ever groaning but say, ‘I, a wretched man, thank God, through Jesus Christ. Even though I do not see it all, I am going to praise God’. There is deliverance, there is the liberty of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is “joy in the Holy Spirit”.
From ‘Absolute Surrender’.