The War Between Your Selves (Part 2) 47:27

If you're a Christian, you know that your struggles with sin, selfishness, and idolatry don't suddenly stop once you've started following Christ. In fact, the battle between good and evil and between our old self and new self continues to be challenging. Today, Tim Keller explores the war between ourselves that all followers of Christ must face and explains how we can have hope and peace in the midst of the fight.

After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our Life in the Gospel quarterly journal with articles that feature how the gospel is changing hearts, lives, and communities, as well as highlighting other gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. Please look with me at the passages printed in your bulletin on which the teaching will this morning be based. It's Romans 7, verse 1.

verses 14 to 25, Romans 7, verses 14 through 25. Now we know that the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do, for what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me.

I know that nothing good lives in me that is in my sinful nature, for I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do, no, the evil I do not want to do, this I keep on doing. Now, if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this law at work. When I want to do good, evil is right there with me.

For in my inner being I delight in God's law, but 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. What a wretched man I am! Who will deliver me, who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God, through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then I myself, in my mind, am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature, a slave to the law of sin. This is God's word.

We began to talk about this last week. In the famous story, novel, by Robert Louis Stevenson, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we know that there's a statement that Henry Jekyll makes that shows that, to a great degree, that very, very famous tale and story is inspired by this passage here.

Because when Henry Jekyll for the first time takes the potion and he finds himself becoming Edward Hyde, he says, I knew myself at the first breath of this new life to be more wicked, tenfold more wicked, sold a slave to my original sin. And you see, that's clearly an allusion to these passages in Paul, especially this passage in which Paul talks about two selves, in a sense, fighting within an inner conflict between good and evil.

And of course, the first verse of the passage that we have pulled out for today in which he says, I know the law is spiritual, but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin.

Now, the reason that we bring it out is because, to a great degree, Robert Louis Stevenson's story is inspired by this passage. And of course, as all stories do, as all narratives do, sometimes they throw principles into relief. You remember how the story goes, that Henry Jekyll has come up with a magic potion, he calls it metaphysical chemistry.

And that potion will enable his good and his evil self, the good in him and the evil in him, to become two selves, free from each other. And he thinks that's really going to help because the problem with, he thinks, the human condition is that neither of those selves lets the other one ever enjoy life. The evil self can't get over the guilt from the good self, and the good self can't get over the temptations from the evil self. And so he drinks the potion and he splits.

But he finds, first of all, that the evil part is much more evil than he thought, tenfold more. And he does terrible things as Edward Hyde. And finally, after Edward Hyde does a horrible murder, Henry Jekyll says, no more, that's it, that's it, no more, I'm going to hold him in. And for three months he holds them in as hard as he possibly can until...

He finds that not only was his Edward Hyde more evil than he thought, not only did he have more evil in him than he thought, but his Edward Hyde was also more powerful than he thought. And Hyde comes out. He can't hold him in. And there's a horrible moment in which the center of gravity in the book shifts. One day, you see, Jekyll is the center of gravity, and he has to take a potion to become Edward Hyde. But one day, he's sitting on a bench in Regent Park...

And he actually just becomes Edward Hyde. And he finds that he has to take the potion to become Henry Jekyll. He finds that his evil in him is not only more evil than he thought, but more powerful than he thought. And he loses control. Eventually, Edward Hyde only takes the potion to become Jekyll just to hide from the police. And of course, at the very, very end of the story, you're actually reading his last will and testament at the very end, in which Henry Jekyll is saying, this is the last time I will be Henry Jekyll because I've run out of the potion. I have to take the potion to become Henry Jekyll.

I automatically become Edward Hyde when the potion wears off, and I cannot find the ingredients anymore, and so this is my last will and testament. And the way the story ends is he becomes Hyde for the last time, and Hyde, knowing that he can no longer hide as Jekyll, kills himself rather than let the police catch up with him. Now, the whole point of this book surely is to make you and me look at ourselves and say, are we that bad?

If there was a potion that could actually show us what is inside, are we that bad? Is the evil in us that evil, and is it that powerful? And therefore, another question, of course, immediately rises up, since this is obviously, to a great degree, this story is inspired by the Bible. Is this the biblical view of human nature? And the answer, which we're going to pull out of this passage, is that on the one hand, Robert Louis Stevenson is profoundly right about human nature. In another way, he's profoundly wrong.

In one way, he is absolutely right, but he's also wrong. And I'll tell you why. Because the biblical view of human nature is more pessimistic and more optimistic than any other view that I've ever heard of or known of, and I've looked. First, let's see how his pessimistic view is absolutely right, but then several ways in which his pessimistic view is wrong. First of all, he's right in three ways. I'm just going to mention three fairly quickly, but I'll unpack them for you. First of all,

The first thing he's right in is that there is a deep abyss, a deep core, and a sense of an evil self in every one of us. Now, you know, by the way, this subject warrants a lot more refinement, you know, qualification, refinement of terms and explanation than I'm going to be able to provide. When I'm talking about an evil self, I mean a capacity for evil that's every bit as surprising...

if it was really released and let go every bit as awful as what Robert Louis Stevenson depicts in this troubling story. The first thing that the Bible will say is, yes, that's true. There is an evil self. There is a core of evil like that. Now, this passage actually bears witness to it, and it has troubled people for years, and here's the reason why. There's a popular paradigm. There's a popular paradigm, I think, that the average person holds in thinking about the bell curve paradigm.

of good and evil when it comes to the population as a whole. Most of us believe that on the one hand, there's a small number of real spiritual giants and saints, people who just, who knows why, but they're just so good. They're so wonderful. They're so virtuous. They're so spiritual. And we don't know how they are that way. I guess that's the way they're born. And they're famous. They write books. They become saints. They become people after whom hospitals are named and that sort of thing. And there's a few people like that.

Spiritual giants. There's a small number there. And then we also believe there's a small number of people who are totalitarian dictators and genocidal maniacs and serial killers. And there's a small number over there. But the rest of us are basically pretty good as long as we haven't been abused. As long as we haven't been oppressed.

We're basically pretty good people, unless we're kind of abused or oppressed. And Paul absolutely destroys the whole paradigm because Paul is where? What do we see with Paul? One way or the other, I think history has to say Paul's down here. He's one of those spiritual giants. And Paul says things in this passage that has just bothered people with that paradigm. A lot of people in the church, a lot of people who are Christians still have that paradigm in spite of what the Bible teaches.

And that is, they say, how in the world can a man of God talk like this? Look at what he says. This is not an immature Christian. This is not a non-Christian. This is Paul, the apostle. This isn't just a pastor, you know, supposed to have, you know, his act together a little bit, you know, spiritually speaking. This is the apostle Paul. And what does he say? I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do, what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate, I do.

For what I do is not the good I want to do. It's evil I do not want to do. This I keep on doing. And people say, hold it. Wait a minute. Hold it. A strong Christian leader sins, you know, sometimes, but by and large has overcome it, is walking in a certain amount of victory. People aren't that bad. I mean, Christians aren't supposed to be that bad, not Christian leaders. And Paul smashes through that. And he says, I am the best and I am filled with sin. I am desperately evil.

He says, look at me. You know, look at the curve. Look at my achievements. Look at, I'm up there, but I'm not up there. And just blows right through it all. Now, you know, people over the years, and I can't go into this, people over the years have denied that Paul is speaking his present experience. They've done everything they can. Some people have said Paul is talking about the way he used to feel before he was a Christian.

Even though, as we mentioned last week, if you read the whole chapter, verses 7 to 13, he's talking in the past tense about how he became a Christian. He's talking in the past tense about how he came under conviction of sin and saw he was a sinner and needed Christ. And then when he gets to verse 14, he switches into the present tense. Why would you do that? It's horribly misleading if he's trying to tell us about how it used to be. He's...

The most obvious unforced reading is Paul's talking about his present experience, and he says, I see myself riddled with sin. I see a horrible evil in me. And actually, as we'll see a little later, this is the mark of spiritual maturity. You know, C.S. Lewis said it a long time ago. Ask Hitler if he was a bad man, he'd say no. Ask Lincoln if he was a bad man, he'd say to a great degree. He says, listen, common sense tells you that the better you are, the worse you feel. And the worse you are, the better you feel to be.

This is, no, I'm sorry. If you read verses 14 to 25 and say a mature Christian cannot talk like that, it's a little frightening that you would say it. It means to one, it means at least intellectually you have bought into the paradigm. And even though you say you're a Christian, you read the Bible, you're still holding on to the paradigm. And that is that we're really not that bad. There's not really an evil self in all of us. But it also means you haven't understood the fact that the closer to God you get, I mean,

You haven't understood this fact. John Gerstner put it years ago. He says one time he was invited to a beautiful home for a dinner and he was working at his office and he got up and he looked in a little mirror in his office and he looked at himself and he just did this. He hit him as much hair as I did.

And he went like this, and he looked fine. But when he got into this beautiful dining room in this beautiful house, and he walked by, and of course the lights were very great, whereas in his office the light had been very dim. And he looked over in the mirror, and he noticed that because he'd been working with newsprint and other sorts of things, when he had done this, he'd actually basically smeared all sorts of kind of dark smudges on his face.

bald pate here. And he was so embarrassed because, you see, the closer he got to the light, the more he could see his smudges. The closer you get to the light, the more you see your smudges. And this is the mark of a spirit's mature person. The fact is that the more you understand your heart and the more you understand God's, the more you see things as God sees them, the more you see this tremendous wickedness. Paul's the one who says in Romans 3, there is none righteous, no, not one.

All turn away. Their tongues practice deceit. Their feet are swift to shed blood. There's no fear of God before their eyes. So Robert Louis Stevenson is right. Number one, right? Even in the best Dr. Jekylls, the Dr. Jekylls, if you read the book, you see Dr. Jekylls is, you know, the creme de la creme, you know, the upstanding citizen, the best person. In every Dr. Jekyll, there's an Edward Hyde. Every one. Secondly...

The second thing that he's right about, and the Bible also agrees, is that this very, very wicked self is hidden. Now, why the name Edward Hyde? Because the name is a play on the root of both the word hideous and hidden. Because it's the hideousness of your heart that you must hide. Not just from the world, but also from yourself. It's endemic. The reason the evil in you

has the sway that it has is because you can't see it. To the degree that you cannot see it, to that degree you are in its sway. It makes perfect sense, does it not? See, that is the problem. By definition, there is nobody in this room, nobody in this platform either, who has any idea how evil it is. We can't stand it. We hide it from ourselves. It's hidden. Now, in verse 7 to 13, right before this passage,

Paul talks about the fact that the only way anybody ever gets a chance to see Edward Hyde, is to see your Mr. Hyde in the mirror, is if there is an incredible potion of spiritual illumination that comes into your life. And it's always traumatic, always. Paul tells about it in verses 7 to 13.

which we didn't print because we looked at it in more detail last week, but just to tie these two here together, Paul went along as a young man thinking only about his virtuous self. He saw himself as very virtuous, very moral, very religious. He loved God. Then the Christians came, and he hated those Christians. It brought out the worst in him. He stood there and he held the coats of the ones who were executing Stephen.

you know, in Acts chapter 8. And then he went into a towering rage. He hated those Christians. And he went after them and he began to arrest them and he began to put them to death. And then on the road to Damascus, a literal light from heaven knocked him to the ground, signifying an internal spiritual illumination light that showed him that underneath the veneer of being so moral and so upright, there was this unbelievable self of coveting, of fear, of

of desire for self-glory, of ego, of pride, and of violence. And he hadn't seen it. He hadn't seen it at all. He suddenly realized that he'd been telling himself he was living a sort of virtuous life, but underneath there was this ravening wolf.

Underneath this was his incredible ego, and he was going to get glory, and he was going to feel superior to other people, and he didn't care who he trampled in order to get that sense of glory, self-glory. And when he saw that, he saw that coveting. It says he was decimated. He looked into the mirror. He saw Edward Hyde. He saw his Edward Hyde. So he saw it. And it takes...

Something usually like that, you have got to be knocked off your horse. There has to be, in spiritual illumination, when it shows you that down deep there are abysses in your heart capable of enormous self-pity, self-pride, self-centeredness, self-deception. When you first see it, it's terribly traumatic. You know, one of the things that, you know, there's a...

One of the movies that you can't avoid but see in the summer because it keeps coming up, you know, in your motel room, you know, on the TV and things like that, I saw the third Indiana Jones movie. And, you know, what you really have is you have this whole idea of illumination only sanitized in a Hollywood way there, and that's the reason why it's pretty phony, and yet it's interesting. Sean Connery plays Indiana Jones' father, and he's obsessed all of his life to find the cup, the grail, the cup after, you know, that Jesus drank out of at the Last Supper.

In the very beginning of the movie, you see that he neglects his family. He neglects his child, Indiana Jones. He neglects everything. He's obsessed with it. And he's praying for illumination, thinking he means illumination so that he can find the grail. But when he finds the grail in the end,

He comes to an awareness that he had been driven. He comes to an awareness that it was an idol. He comes to an awareness that he'd built his whole life around it. And in the end, it's sort of ironic, as people are dying, trying to get the grail, what is he saying? Let it go. And he walks on out at the end, and they say, what did you find in there? And he says, illumination. What? Illumination. He saw that he had built his whole life around this instead of being a good father, instead of being a good person. And so what does he do?

Yeah. He smiles, he hugs his son, and he rides off into the sunset. Hey, now, you know, I see I ruined my life. I see I ruined your life. I see underneath there was this desire for glory, this obsession. I saw this coveting at the very heart of my life, but now I see everything's okay. Paul is more realistic. He's decimated, absolutely decimated, when he sees that inside, underneath the veneer, there is this desire. There's a desire for glory. There are ways in which we think we're going to get it.

And we hide from ourself just how strong that is, just how ruthless that is, and just how much we're willing to step on anybody or anything who gets in our way of getting it. There is an evil self, number one. That's true. And number two, his name is Hyde. He hides. By definition, he hides. You do not see it. You do not want to see it. You cannot see it. And by the way, one last thing on this.

For thousands of years, all human beings have had these horrible psychological defense mechanisms to keep from seeing how wicked you really are. We all have it. We can't bear it. But for the last 150 years, we've had a lot of intellectual constructs out there that we learn in college, usually, or just out there. Learn them also on talk shows. To confirm this idea that you're basically a good person, and that if you actually see a person who is very, very wicked, something weird must have happened to them.

I think one of the most interesting parts, one of the most interesting things is the place where in the book, not in the movie, but in the book Silence of the Lambs, remember that there's this terrible serial killer Hannibal Lecter and he has interviews with Officer Starling, the FBI intern, and she's trying to solve a case.

And at one point, of course, you know, in the movie, I can't help but, when you think of Hannibal Lecter, you think of Anthony Hopkins did an incredible job in that movie. And he says something that just bums out Officer Starling. And she says something like this. She says, what must have happened to you to twist you like this and make you such a, you know, such a twisted person? And this is what he says. And, you know, you can just hear Anthony Hopkins' voice. He says, why, nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened...

You can't reduce me to a set of influences. Why, you've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants. Nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil?

He nails her. Here's how he nails her. He recognizes when she says, what awful thing must have happened to twist you? He recognizes it, of course, as sort of a talk show, TV talk show, psychobabble. But more than that, he recognizes it as an unbelievable ego defense mechanism. Incredibly self-serving, incredibly paternalistic, incredibly patronizing. He knows that he makes her wonder, am I like that?

And she has to defend herself. Oh, no, something bad must have happened to you. And he says, look at me. And then you will know that I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. Have you bought into behaviorism? Have you gotten rid of good and evil? If you believe in good and evil at all, you have to recognize I am evil. And if you recognize I am evil, not because of, you know, maybe my mother did something bad to me, but that wasn't the cause. It was only the occasion for the evil. You've got this in you too, Officer Starling. There is something

Somebody like me in you, Officer Starling? His name is Hyde. You're hiding from him. Now, the third thing Robert Louis Stevenson said is absolutely right. First of all, he says that there is an evil self, that evil, that wicked in you, every one of us. It's in Paul. Therefore, it's in everybody. And secondly, his name is Hyde. He hides. You don't want to see it. You do everything you can to keep away from it. He used intellectual and psychological ways of hiding just how deeply selfish you are.

Or at least can be. And then lastly, the other thing that Robert Stevenson says in this story that is absolutely true and absolutely biblical is you will never deal with it through willpower. You will never, ever win the battle by trying harder. Never. Why does God allow suffering in the world? How can one religion be right and the others wrong? Has science basically disproved Christianity?

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You know, in the movie, pardon me, in the book, I alluded to this, in the book, after Edward Hyde does a horrible murder and when Jekyll becomes Jekyll, he says, that's it, I've got to stop. And for three months, he does incredible good. And he actually talks about it. He says, in the, yeah, he says, I resolved in my future, yeah, I resolved from that moment in my future conduct to redeem the past.

And I can say with honesty that my resolve was fruitful. You know how earnestly in the last months of last year I labored to relieve suffering. You know that much was done for others. However, he went into his family fortune and he just began, he just emptied it. He emptied his pockets. He began to do good. He began to relieve suffering. He opened his home. He was as good and as virtuous as he possibly could be. And one day he was sitting on the bench in Regent Park and suddenly he looked down and he saw his hands had gotten all kind of knobbly and hairy and he realized he'd become Edward Hyde.

And the message there is that trying harder, yeah, trying harder to be good not only didn't beat Edward Hyde, made him stronger. Now, one of the themes of Romans 7 that I think Christians miss all the time is that, that's one of the themes. One of the themes is not only, see, Paul is continually saying the law is good, but powerless. The law is good. He says nothing wrong with the law.

The law of God is very, very good. The fact of the matter is that I can't do it. But he doesn't just say the law of God is good but powerless. He says the law of God isn't just powerless to deal with my inner evil, but he says the law of God actually strengthens the inner evil. My evil is such that when you say no to it, you don't weaken it, you strengthen it. He says up in chapter 7, verse 5,

He actually uses the term, now we didn't write this, it was last week. He says, my sinful passions were aroused by the law. He didn't just say they were, you know, that they were, he didn't just say my sinful passions were not affected by the law. He says they were affected by the law. He didn't say they were weakened.

When I tried real hard to be good, he says they were strengthened. And of course, this interesting verse right here in verse 21, he says, I find this law. Now that's confusing because the word law there means I find this principle. I find this dynamic. When I want to do good, evil is right there. Now most translators say the best way to understand this is what Paul is saying is when I most want to do good, when I try the hardest to obey the law, evil is closest to me.

Now listen, it's not just Robert Louis Stevenson, it's not just Paul, it's not just God. Common sense tells us this. And one of the things that's so intriguing to me, listen here, what I've just said before kind of cuts against, I guess, the liberal version of what we should do about democracy.

Evil. The liberal version of what we should do about evil is this. The liberal version says people are basically good if we have good social programs, if we raise people right, if we educate people right, then if we get people good jobs, then we'll get rid of this evil behavior. And of course, what I've said so far cuts against that. But now, at this point, this principle, which is all through Romans 7, cuts against the conservative version of what we're going to do about evil behavior.

Because what does the conservative version do? The conservative version says, ah, social programs, education, jobs, come on, people are bad. We have bad people out there, so here's what we're going to do. We're going to have more laws. We're going to have more sanctions. We're going to clamp down. We're going to have more rewards for good behavior. We're going to have more punishments for bad behavior. We're going to reward responsibility. We're going to punish irresponsibility.

And listen, I'm not talking about social programs here for a second. In the short run, that can work. But what Paul is saying and what God is saying and what Robert Louis Stevenson's story is saying, and I think what common sense says, in the long run, that doesn't work at all. Because if there's something about the human heart, it's called sin, there's something about the human heart, if you want to get it to do something, tell it it's wrong. And that will get it to do it. Have you seen? It's funny and a little sad, but absolutely indicative. If you go to the arts and leisure section of the New York Times today,

The headline is about, well, I know what the headline is. The headline is, After the Preaching, the Lore of the Taboo. Now, of course, a preacher sees a headline like that and wants to see, what is this? Here's what it's about.

It's about the fact that there was a lot of publicity about this. Over the last four years, the White House and certain institutions and organizations have actually been pushing young people in America to stop smoking in ways you've never seen before. There's all these ads, don't smoke, all this pressure. And over the last three or four years, the percentage of teenagers that smoke is going like this. So Hillary Clinton got on in her syndicated column a little while ago, said she blamed Hollywood.

She says, the trouble is, in Hollywood, cool people are still smoking, and that's undercutting everything we're doing. And the writer, Richard Klein, the writer of the article, rightly said this. He says, why are you blaming Hollywood? Don't you know? And I'll tell you what he said. And here it is. He says, do you not know that, does not Hillary Clinton, Ms. Clinton, allow for the possibility that she herself deserves some responsibility for the way in which issues of health have been put forth in tones of moral condemnation

that always entices transgression. Now what he is saying is very simple. He says if you want to get people to transgress something, tell them it's wrong. Moral condemnation always entices transgression. The way to get a kid, the way to get anybody to do something is to say, that's immoral. And he's actually saying, now, he's wrong. He doesn't see, actually, what's interesting about this article. In one way, it's theologically very right.

He says, you're not going to get people to stop doing destructive behavior by telling him it's wrong. That actually encourages them. The lure of the taboo. But you know what he does at the end? What he says is, therefore, don't condemn people. Stop preaching to people. But what the heck is he doing? He's not preaching to the kids now. He's preaching to them, those people. Which shows this. He does not recognize the serious problem that we have got. If the only way to stop destructive behavior is to say no...

and rational arguments against destructive and immoral behavior, and moral prohibitions against destructive and immoral behavior, if those things, if the human heart is such that those things not only don't stop it, but actually enhance it and strengthen it, that's what Paul says, that's what God says, that's what Jekyll and Hyde finally gives to you graphically, and that's what everybody knows by common sense. We're in trouble. But the point of this point is not to solve it, but just to make it. There is an evil in us all, number one. Number two, his name is Hyde. He hides...

You do not know. You do not see. It takes traumatic spiritual illumination to see it. And number three, moral willpower and effort and sanctions and trying harder doesn't do a thing. What are we going to do? Well, we said that even though he was right, the vision of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was right, we also said it's profoundly wrong. And it's profoundly wrong because Robert Louis Stevenson at least doesn't seem to know. I don't think he seems to know.

that there is a whole different set of terms on which you can fight the battle. He's right that there's a battle. He's right that most people don't even see the battle. And he's right that if you really try hard through your willpower, that you always lose the battle. But he doesn't seem to think there's any other way but willpower to do the battle. And the Bible tells us there is. That's on the far side of conversion.

He says, the Bible says that that battle is a battle that if you have not brought Christ into the center of your life, you're doomed to lose. You can't help but lose it. But on the other hand, the Bible says that if you have brought Christ into the center of your life, you can't help but win it.

But the Bible says not simply that you bring Christ in and then he helps you try harder, but rather when Christ comes into your life, the battle becomes a whole different battle. It's fought on different terms. It's fought with different weapons. It's fought with different consciousness, as well as being fought with a different result. And all I can do is show you from the text how different those terms are. The first difference is, first thing, this text tells us that if you want to

to understand the Christian fight with sin. And if you want to engage with the Christian fight with sin, fighting sin with Christ, a battle you can't lose, first thing you have to see is your first job is not to fight the evil self, but to convert your virtuous self. The first thing you've got to do is not just to ask Christ into your heart to sort of give you strength so you can fight your evil self, but rather you've got to convert your virtuous self. Now, this is pretty, I think, pretty intriguing.

Paul says, let me, you know, usually I've been using Stevenson and then Paul to show you, make a point. Let me do it reverse. Paul says a very important statement in chapter 7 here, verse 21 and 22. He says, I delight in my inner being in the law of God.

Now, this proves that Paul is speaking as a Christian because just a few verses later in chapter 8, verse 4, Paul says, point blank, the natural mind, the unconverted mind, the mind without the spirit, he says, the natural mind is enmity against God. It will not submit to the law of God. Indeed, it cannot. He says the natural mind in the inmost self hates the law of God.

One thing people don't usually do when you look at Romans 8, verse 4, it's a pretty famous verse, but people very often don't realize how startling it is since Paul is describing his own pre-conversion self in those terms. And I'll show you why that's so startling. Paul is saying that before he became a Christian, he hated the law of God. And now that he is a Christian, he loves it.

And right away you have to ask yourself, how could that possibly be? If you know anything about Paul's pre-conversion self, and you can read about it in Philippians 3 and Acts 8 and 9 and elsewhere, he poured over the law of God. He obeyed it. He preached it. He taught it. He memorized it. He pushed it on other people. How in the world? But you know what he's saying? He's saying that as an incredibly moral, incredibly religious person,

In his heart of hearts, the basic mainspring, the thing that made his whole life go, even though he was pouring over the law of God and he was teaching the law of God, he was memorizing it, he was doing everything he could intensely to obey it, he hated it. He resented God for making him do it. Now, Robert Louis Stevenson gets kind of close to this in an amazing spot. I told you that Stevenson says that Jekyll...

tried for three months to overcome Hyde by living an incredibly good life. And then one day he was sitting on a park bench and he became Hyde. But it tells how. He gets so close to this. He gets so close in a sense to the gospel at this point. He said, I was sitting. Okay. He says, you know, I was trying. He says, but on a fine, clear January day, I sat in the sun in Regents Park and I reflected and smiled. Listen, comparing myself with other men, comparing my act of goodwill with the lazy cruelty of their neglect.

And at that very moment, at the moment of that vain, glorious thought, a qualm came over me, a horrid nausea, a dreadful shuddering. I looked down. I was once more Edward High. Now, do you see what's going on? He comes this close. And this is the difference between Christianity and religion. This is the difference between the old battle and the new battle. Before you become a Christian, you believe that there's this horrible, horrible and complete antipathy between the good and the evil in you.

You see goodness that wants to be good and be generous and be loving and be just. And you see evil that's selfish. And they're totally against each other. But Paul saw, and Robert Louis Stevenson for a second saw this, that when Jekyll tried incredibly hard to be incredibly righteous, to rescue himself through his moral good efforts, he found out that instead of going away from Hyde, he was becoming Hyde. He became Hyde himself.

through his self-righteousness, just as you can become Hyde through your unrighteousness. Because what Louis Stevenson shows and what Paul says very explicitly is there ultimately is no difference between a Jekyll who's trying to rescue himself and a Hyde who's trying to rescue himself.

A jackal who's trying to say, I, through my moral effort, I will be feeling good about myself. In other words, instead of letting God be my savior, instead of God being my Lord, I will show that by living a good life, God has to save me. God has to honor me. God has to obey my, listen to my prayers. And what is Edward Hyde doing? He's running off and saying, I'm going to do what the heck I want to do. You see, both of them are saying, the heck with God. Both of them are saying, I will be my own savior. They are the same.

It's so interesting. On that park bench, Robert Louis Stevenson seemed to understand that Jekyll, by becoming as Jekyll-y as he possibly could, became Hyde. Big shock to him. Big shock in the whole book. But it shouldn't be a big shock to people who understand the gospel. Because the gospel is not that you give God a righteousness and then he owes you. But that God, through Jesus Christ, gives you a righteousness. That he forgives you. That he saves you. He rescues you. And then you live a life of gratitude for him. Now think about that.

Paul says, before I became a Christian, when I was obeying the law, I was never doing it for God. I was never doing it with delight. I hated the law. I hated it, but I did it so I could feel better about myself. I did it so I could feel superior to others, and I did it so God would owe me, which means that he hated the law. Something has happened. The first step in winning this battle is not fighting harder against your evil self, but converting that virtuous self, that self-righteous virtuous self.

Paul says now, the thing that I have that I didn't have before is not now that I live so much better life. Isn't that interesting? If you read verses 14 to 25, what he's really saying is many of the things I used to do, I still do. He's not saying the big change between being a Christian, being non-Christian, as a non-Christian, I did everything wrong, and now as a Christian, I do everything right. As a non-Christian, I was filled with inner conflict, and now as a Christian, I'm full of serenity and calmness, and it's such a blessing. That's not what he says.

Instead, what he says is, there was a change in my heart before. I basically hated God. I did everything out of pride. I did everything out of resentment. The mainspring, my inmost self, was resentment toward God. I obeyed God, but I was griping. I was begrudging. I did it as a way not to please him, not to delight in him. I didn't please and delight in anything. I did it so that I could put him in my debt and I could put everyone else in my debt. But when he was converted, when Paul understood the gospel,

That virtuous, self-righteous self changed. How did it get changed? Well, the second thing, of course, is if you're going to win this battle, you don't just work on the evil self. You first convert the virtuous self. How? You don't do it through willpower. You do it through the gospel. What's the gospel? It's in verse 24 and 25. Paul says three things, and it's so easy to run right by them, but they are three incredibly important things. If you want to become a Christian, you have to do those three things.

And if you want to defeat evil and sin in your life today, you have to do those three things. What are they? First of all, he says...

Wretched man that I am. Now, I admit that I'm not giving it exactly because I remember it. I studied this years ago. But in the Greek, and this is a paraphrase, he says, wretched man that I am. That's the first thing he says. He doesn't say, if I really try hard, I can overcome this. I will stick Edward Hyde back in the bottle. No, you can never get the genie back in the bottle. You can never do that. I'll put him back in the bottle. He says, I can do it. No, the first step, wretched man that I am. I am helpless. I am helpless.

I'm helpless. The second thing he says, who will rescue me? He doesn't say, I will rescue me. He turns away from the things he thought would rescue him, the ways in which he was trying to rescue himself. And then he says, what? Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, if you look at that carefully, this is the secret. On the one hand, what he's saying is, I see who saves me and it's not me. Here's the gospel. Jesus Christ came to earth and

And he did what you have not done. Well, you say, what are you talking about? How could Jesus have been tempted? He didn't have an evil in him. He didn't have a hide in him. Well, no, he didn't. And as a result, however, he got something worse. God put him in a bottle with the devil, the ultimate Edward Hyde, let's say. And he put him into the world with the devil. And the devil raged against him. And the devil spit at him. And the devil tempted him. And at the very end, the devil stirred and raged and stirred people up to kill him.

And all during that time, Jesus Christ did what you and I have not done, and that is he never gave in. He never gave in to temptation. He always obeyed. He always loved. He never succumbed. He never lapsed. But when he died on the cross, and when he lived that life, and when he was raised from the dead, the Bible says he didn't just do it as an example. He did it for us. And just as when David slew Goliath, it wasn't just David's victory, but it was the victory of all those for whom he was standing as champion.

So that all the Israelites partook in the victory of David over Goliath. So when you receive Christ as your Savior, what does that mean? It means God now treats you as if you had spent all of your life resisting. He loves you and accepts you as if you have done it all right.

It's what makes you a Christian is, and what, what helps you overcomes it is not simply that you say, I don't rescue myself. Jesus Christ has rescued me. No, no. He doesn't just say wretched men that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death? Who will deliver me from this? Jesus Christ will. That's not what he says. He says, thanks be. Now, this is the secret. At the moment you're tempted, you can just say, I'm going to try harder. I'm going to try harder. Or you can thank God and rejoice in

The way in which Jesus Christ has addressed the need that you're trying to address through sin. Do you hear that? You can try harder, you can try, or you can thank God, you can rejoice in the way in which Jesus Christ has addressed the need that you right now are trying to handle through sin. What if you're struggling with resentment and anger towards somebody?

Somebody who's really besmirched your reputation. Well, you can say, I'm a Christian. I am not going to feel, I'm going to be very nice to that person. I'm going to make them feel very bad because I'm going to be so nice to them after they've been so mean to me. You can do that. I'm going to be so virtuous. You know what? What are you doing? What are you doing? Jekyll, you are just hide. You're just a nice hide. No, no, no. What do you do? You say, I'm weak. I am filled with sin.

But who cares the fact that my reputation's been hurt? Why do I care about what the peasants think of me when I have the honor of the king? And you turn and you say, thank you, that in you, you love me. You care for me. My reputation is perfect in you. You're my friend and you are my brother, even though you are my king. I love you more than any other, so much more than anything. What do you do at that point? That's thanking God for the salvation.

That if your heart really knew it, you wouldn't be out there in bitterness. All your sins, your bitterness, your lack of self-control, all your problems are ways of trying to rescue yourself. So unless you thank God for how he has rescued you in Christ, unless you think about the way, unless you rejoice and unless your heart rests and you thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ, that is the way you fight sin.

Thanks for listening to today's teaching. We trust you were encouraged by it and that it gives you new insight into how you can apply God's word to your life. You can find more resources from Tim Keller by subscribing to our quarterly journal at gospelandlife.com. When you subscribe, you'll receive free articles, sermons, devotionals, and other valuable resources. We also invite you to stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter.

This month's sermons were recorded in 1997. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017 while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.