The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

       Oh wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. {Romans 7:24,25}

      1. If I chose to occupy your time with controversial matters, I might prove conclusively that the apostle Paul is here describing his own experience as a Christian. Some have affirmed that he is merely describing what he was before conversion, and not what he was when he became the recipient of the grace of God. But such people are evidently mistaken, and I believe wilfully mistaken; for any simple hearted, candid mind, reading through this chapter, could not fall into such an error. It is Paul the apostle, who was not less than the very greatest of the apostles — it is Paul, the mighty servant of God, a very prince in Israel, one of the King’s mighty men — it is Paul, the saint and the apostle, who here exclaims, “Oh wretched man that I am!”

      2. Now, humble Christians are often the dupes of a very foolish error. They look up to certain advanced saints and able ministers, and they say, “Surely, such men as these do not suffer as I do; they do not contend with the same evil passions as those which vex and trouble me.” Ah! if they knew the heart of those men, if they could read their inward conflicts, they would soon discover that the nearer a man lives to God, the more intensely he has to mourn over his own evil heart, and the more his Master honours him in his service, the more also does the evil of the flesh vex and tease him day by day. Perhaps, this error is more natural, since it is certainly more common, with regard to apostolic saints. We have been in the habit of saying, Saint Paul, and Saint John, as if they were more saints than any others among the children of God. They are all saints whom God has called by his grace, and sanctified by his Spirit; but somehow we very foolishly put the apostles and the early saints into another category, and do not venture to look on them as common mortals. We look upon them as some extraordinary beings, who could not be men of like passions with ourselves. We are told in Scripture that our Saviour was “tempted in all points like as we are”; and yet we fall into the outrageous error of imagining that the apostles, who were far inferior to the Lord Jesus, escaped these temptations, and were ignorant of these conflicts. The fact is, if you had seen the apostle Paul, you would have thought he was remarkably like the rest of the chosen family: and if you had talked with him, you would have said, “Why, Paul, I find that your experience and mine exactly agree. You are more faithful, more holy, and more deeply taught than I, but you have the very same trials to endure. No, in some respects you are more severely tried than I.” Do not look upon the ancient saints as being exempt either from infirmities or sins; and do not regard them with that mystic reverence which almost makes you an idolater. Their holiness is attainable even by you, and their faults are to be censured as much as your own. I believe it is a Christian’s duty to force his way into the inner circle of saintship; and if these saints were superior to us in their attainments, as they certainly were, let us follow them; let us press forward up to, yes, and beyond them, for I do not see that this is impossible. We have the same light that they had, the same grace is accessible to us, and why should we rest satisfied until we have outrun them in the heavenly race? Let us bring them down to the sphere of common mortals. If Jesus was the Son of Man, and very man, “bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh”; so were the apostles; and it is an outrageous error to suppose that they were not the subjects of the same emotions, and the same inward trials, as the very lowliest of the people of God. So far, this may give us comfort and encouragement, when we find that we are engaged in a battle in which apostles themselves have had to fight.

      3. And now we shall notice this morning, first, the two natures, secondly their constant battle; thirdly, we shall step aside and look at the weary warrior, and hear him cry, “Oh wretched man that I am”; and then we shall turn our eye in another direction, and see that fainting warrior girding up his loins for the conflict, and becoming an expectant victor, while he shouts, “I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

      4. I. First, then, THE TWO NATURES. Carnal men, unrenewed men, have one nature — a nature which they inherited from their parents, and which, through the ancient transgression of Adam, is evil, only evil, and that continually. Mere human nature, such as is common to every man, has in it many excellent traits, when judging it between man and man. A merely natural man may be honest, upright, kind, and generous, he may have noble and generous thoughts, and may attain to a true and manly speech; but when we come to matters of true religion, spiritual matters that concern God and eternity, the natural man can do nothing. The carnal mind, whose ever mind it may be, is fallen, and is at enmity with God, does not know the things of God, nor can it ever know them. Now, when a man becomes a Christian, he becomes one by the infusion of a new nature. He is naturally “dead in trespasses and sins,” “without God and without hope.” The Holy Spirit enters into him, and implants in him a new principle, a new nature, a new life. That life is a high, holy and supernatural principle; it is, in fact the divine nature, a ray from the great “Father of Lights”; it is the Spirit of God dwelling in man. Thus, you see, the Christian becomes a double man — two men in one. Some have imagined that the old nature is turned out of the Christian: not so, for the Word of God and experience teach the contrary, the old nature is in the Christian unchanged, unaltered, just the same, as bad as it ever was; while the new nature in him is holy, pure and heavenly; and hence, as we shall have to notice in the next place — hence there arises a conflict between the two.

      5. Now, I want you to notice what the apostle says about these two natures that are in the Christian, for I am about to contrast them. First, in our text the apostle calls the old nature “the body of this death.” Why does he call it “the body of this death?” Some suppose he means these dying bodies; but I do not think so. If it were not for sin, we should have no fault to find with our poor bodies. They are noble works of God, and are not in themselves the cause of sin. Adam in the garden of perfection, felt the body to be no encumbrance, nor if sin were absent should we have any fault to find with our flesh and blood. What, then, is it? I think the apostle calls the evil nature within him a body, first, in opposition to those who talk of the remnants of corruption in a Christian. I have heard people say that there are relics, remainders and remnants of sin in a believer. Such men do not know much about themselves yet. Oh! it is not a bone, or a rag which is left; it is the whole body of sin that is there — all of it, “from the crown of the head to the sole of the foot.” Grace does not maim this body and cut away its members; it leaves it intact, although blessed be God, it crucifies it, nailing it to the cross of Christ. And again, I think he calls it a body because it is something tangible. We all know that we have a body; it is a thing we can feel; we know it is there. The new nature is a spirit, subtle, and not easy to detect, I sometimes have to question myself as to whether it is there at all. But as for my old nature, that is a body, I can never find it difficult to recognise its existence, it is as apparent as flesh and bones. Just as I never doubt that I am in flesh and blood, so I never doubt that I have sin within me. It is a body — a thing which I can see and feel, and which, to my pain, is ever present with me.

      6. Understand, then, that the old nature of the Christian is a body; it has in it a substance, or, as Calvin puts it, it is a mass of corruption. It is not simply a shred, a remnant — the piece of the old garment, but all of it is still there. True, it is crushed beneath the foot of grace; it is cast out of its throne; but it is there, there in all its entirely, and in all its sad tangibility, a body of death. But why does he call it a body of death? Simply to express what an awful thing this sin is that remains in the heart. It is a body of death. I must use an example, which is always appended to this text, and very properly so. It was the custom of ancient tyrants, when they wished to put men through the most fearful punishments, to tie a dead body to them, placing the two back to back; and there was the living man, with a dead body closely strapped to him, rotting, putrid, corrupting, and this he must drag with him wherever he went. Now, this is just what the Christian has to do. He has within him the new life; he has a living and undying principle, which the Holy Spirit has put within him, but he feels that every day he has to drag about with him this dead body, this body of death, a thing as loathsome, as hideous, as abominable to his new life, as a dead stinking carcass would be to a living man. Francis Quarles gives a picture at the beginning of one of his emblems, of a great skeleton in