From Saul to Paul: the Biblical Doctrine of Conversion - Romans 7

The following is the manuscript of a message given at the Keystone Baptist Association's IX Marks of a Healthy Church Workshop at Oakwood Baptist Church in Camp Hill, PA on August 27, 2011.

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I’ve been given the privilege of speaking to you today on the biblical doctrine of conversion.  When I think of conversion, one of the first things that comes to mind outside the biblical context of that word is a fad that began way back in the 60s: Conversion vans.

In essence, a conversion van is a normal van with some serious upgrades.  Big, plush seats.  The roof is raised up for more head room and storage.  Cup holders everywhere.  And today they have flat screen TVs for High Def movies.  That’s why they call it a conversion van.  It was a normal van, but it’s been changed.  Converted.

When we speak of biblical conversion, we’re not talking about faith-based rehabilitation.  We’re not talking about some kind of religious renovation.  Conversion is not like a kitchen upgrade where the old, outdated appliances are hauled to the dump and replaced with new, stainless steel, energy-efficient models.  That is not what we mean when we speak of conversion in the biblical sense of the term.

Simply put, what we mean when we speak of conversion is what Jesus meant when he said to Nicodemus in John 3, “You must be born again.” Not renovated, not remodeled.  We’re not talking about rearranging the mental furniture in our heads.  When Nicodemus heard Jesus’ words he was incredulous: “How can a man be born when he is old?” And Jesus answer was,

7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.”

Conversion is the gift of a new life by the Spirit of God.  A new life from the dead.

It’s sometimes hard for us to understand the pervasive nature of conversion until we begin to grasp the spiritual condition of the unsaved.  What does the Bible mean when it refers to the “natural man”.  Exactly what is the condition of the unregenerate, unconverted person?  In a word, the natural man is a dead man.  Dead in trespasses and sins  (Eph 2:1).

Recently I have experienced a rather strange fascination with the program Hoarders.  I can’t recommend that you watch it.  I wonder about the ethics of a TV program that capitalizes on someone who has such serious mental troubles.  I feel genuine sorrow for the people who find themselves in these situations.

What I have seen on this program is so awful it is almost unbelievable.  I would not have thought it possible that person could live for years in a house filled with trash and animal feces nearly three feet thick on the floor.  Closets filled to the ceiling with plastic bags containing human waste because the bathroom was so full of bags it was no longer accessible.

One episode tells the account of a man whose house was practically buried in junk.  He navigated his home by little paths through the trash.  But before he entered his house, he would take his shoes off to keep from tracking dirt onto his “new” carpet.

Hoarders cannot comprehend the seriousness of their obvious problem.  One man had trouble parting with hundreds of rats running loose in his house because they were his pets.  A woman, a beautician, struggled to part company with her 23 sick and dying cats.  Thirteen dead cats were found in her house. She was able to perpetually overlook the fact that her home had become one giant litter box.  When she was asked to comment on the condition of her totally uninhabitable house and she looked at the floor and said, “I guess I’m not a very good house keeper.”

This serves to illustrate for us the condition of the natural man.  Prior to conversion, sinners are completely blind to their own obvious problem.  They are quite comfortable with the filth of their own sin.  As sinners, we love living in the miry pit of our sin even though we know somewhere deep down in our hearts that the very sin we love is killing us.  And when someone tries to persuade us to repent and turn from our filth, we take offense.  It is foolishness to think of leaving my trash heap.  The natural man lives in a sinful pig stye of his own making and he has no intention of leaving it.

That is why the Bible speaks of the need for conversion rather than some form of pseudo-spiritual therapeutic rehabilitation.  The natural man is so in love with his hoard of sin that he is actually a slave to it without any ability or any desire to break free.  It’s like living in a house with three feet of cat feces and defending yourself by saying, “Well, I guess I’m not a very good house keeper.”

Now let’s consider a different situation.  It’s Sunday morning and the pastor has preached the biblical gospel message to the spiritual equivalent of a hoarder of sin, an unsaved man.  This man hears the message and in response to what he has heard he says he is now a believer.  He understands his sin is repulsive, his sins are many, and a holy God has been greatly offended by him.  He understands his sin has condemned him.  But now he is trusting in Jesus as his Lord and Savior.  How do we know this person has truly, actually believed the Gospel?  In other words, what are the fruits of genuine, biblical conversion?

Often we confuse what we describe as our conversion experience with conversion itself.  Regardless of the particular circumstances that surround someone’s new birth, what does being born again look like?  How is the mind and heart affected?  What is converted in conversion?  Romans 7:13-25 answers these questions quite well.

7 What then shall we say? That the law is sin? By no means! Yet if it had not been for the law, I would not have known sin. For I would not have known what it is to covet if the law had not said, “You shall not covet.” 8 But sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. For apart from the law, sin lies dead. 9 I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. 10 The very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. 11 For sin, seizing an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me. 12 So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.

13 Did that which is good, then, bring death to me? By no means! It was sin, producing death in me through what is good, in order that sin might be shown to be sin, and through the commandment might become sinful beyond measure. 14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

V13 – This text is usually referred to as an example of how we as believers struggle with sin.  It is true that Christians, as James says, “stumble in many ways.” But this section deals not with believers but with the unbeliever.  Here Paul is describing how a certain person, Saul by name, came to finally recognize his own hoard of sin and his inability to deliver himself from it.

He begins here with the Law and its effects upon his own conscience.  The purpose of preaching the Law is to produce death, not life; guilt, not peace; condemnation, not salvation.  That is exactly the point of verses 7-12. “When the commandment came, sin came alive and I died. It killed me.” (vs 9 & 11). The law of God revealed to Saul that he was dead because of sin.

Paul continues that line of thinking in verse 13.  Although the Law in itself is good, holy and just, it supernaturally caused him to see his sin as utterly sinful, “sinful beyond measure!” (v 13)

That is how the Gospel works: it first shows us our condition.  Saul had a hard time seeing it.  He was a Pharisee!  An expert in keeping the Law!  Or at least he had deceived himself to believe he kept the Law.   But suddenly the very Law that Saul took great pride in observing in even the most minute detail now revealed to him that he was extremely guilty of the sin of covetousness.

If the Law of God is the standard by which we measure goodness, then no one is good.  We can only speak of good people in relative terms.  We tend to believe criminals and dictators and prostitutes and drug dealers are morally inferior to us good and decent people.  But the comparison of our morality amongst our fellow human beings is still a comparison of morality amongst worms.  It’s like comparing cleanliness amongst hoarders.  The very best of mankind are moral pygmies.  Even Jesus said, “No one is good but One, that is, God.” (Matt 19:17, Mk 10:18, Lk 18:19).

Our perception of our own personal goodness is a perceived goodness. God’s Law makes that obvious.  But even the obvious escapes the sinner who is so spiritually insensitive that he cannot see the mountain of sin in which he lives daily.  But Jesus said it is the Holy Spirit that makes these truths evident to our consciences.

In verse 14, Saul is testifying to his condition by saying, the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh. These are the opposite ends of the spiritual: spiritual vs. fleshly; heavenly vs. carnal; holiness vs. depravity.  “The law is Holy but I am carnal, governed by my fallen sinful human nature and not by the Spirit of God.  My life is entirely incompatible with the commands of God.  I am opposed by nature to everything holy.  I am predisposed toward evil and away from God.  I am sold under sin!”  He is enslaved by his sin and the next verses describe that slavery in morbid detail.

Vs15 –16 Let me read verse 15 to you from the NASB: For that which I am doing, I do not understand; for I am not practicing what I would like to do, but I am doing the very thing I hate.  (Romans 7:15, NASB).

Also from the NKJV: For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do. (Romans 7:15, NKJV).

Paul, speaking as the unconverted Saul, is saying, “I cannot help BUT sin!”  The sin of Adam, and the curse it brought upon us affected our wills.  The natural man is not capable of doing what he knows in his own conscience is right and good.  “I don’t do what I would like to do, but I actually find myself doing the sinful things I hate.  I agree with the law that it is good, but I disobey it anyway!”  V16 – “I do what I will not to do!” “I do what I do not WANT to do.” We are not sinners because we sin, but by nature.  We cannot help but sin and we hoard our sin and live in our mountainous piles of sin in our houses filled with the filth and trash of sin.  And we resent those who try to “help” us out of our sin.

Why is this the case?  Because the natural man is not morally neutral.  Saul says, “Sin dwells in me.” The natural, unconverted person, not only lives in sin but sin lives in him!  We are enslaved to this principle of sinfulness which dominates our thoughts and our actions, and this in spite of our acknowledgement that sin is evil, and the Law is good and I must obey it.

The natural man lives consistently contrary to what he knows is morally right.  It became obvious to Saul that his knowledge of the Law of God was not sufficient to empower his will so that he could rise above the actions of his flesh.  “Saul” puts it very bluntly in v. 18 - ”For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” (ESV)  The NKJV puts it this way: To will is present with me, but how to perform what is good I do not find.“ The unconverted soul understands what is right, but cannot do it.

If this is the case, how can a man be saved?  How does a man make a decision for God?

In verses 19 and 20 Paul continues to speak vicariously for the unconverted Saul and he describes for us the vicious cycle that a dead conscience awakened by the Spirit of God through the preaching of the biblical gospel begins to experience:

• I know the Law is good, and that is what I want to do. That is what I MUST do.
• But I keep on sinning, even though I don’t want to. I can’t stop sinning.
• But I want to do what is right. God commands me to be righteous.
• But I don’t do what is right. And I will have to answer to God for all my sin!
• So I MUST obey the law!
• But I CAN’T obey the Law!

Vs 21-23 This cycle of willing and failing is so consistent that Paul says it is a law, or a principle at work.  It is like a spiritual 2^nd Law of Thermodynamics: We are not evolving spiritually, but devolving, becoming more and more guilty as we sin more and more.  The sin keeps piling up and the condemnation keeps piling up, and my denial of it all keeps piling up, in spite of the fact that somehow I know it is killing me.  It is damning me to hell!  My will is captive to my sin.  My will is enslaved to my own sinful nature.”  And that is the realization that causes the man who is being converted by the Spirit of God to cry out …

“Oh wretched man that I am!  Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (v 24).  When you hear those words, that is evidence of genuine conversion.  Now the eyes of the the dead man have been opened.  Now he sees, “I can’t deliver myself from this mess!  I need a savior. Who will deliver me?”

“Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” This is what conversion looks like.  This is what the new birth looks like.  This is the experience of those who are delivered from spiritual death. It comes to us from another.  We cannot deliver ourselves.  The Holy Spirit brings the conviction of the Law of God to bear upon the guilty heart and creates hopelessness.  So we are moved by God’s Spirit to cry out, “Is there anyone out there who can deliver me from my own sin and condemnation?“

And the answer that God supplies is, “Yes!  There is a Deliverer, there is a Redeemer, there is a Savior.”  And the hopeless and helpless sinner repudiates his sinfulness and gladly throws himself upon the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.  That is the person who is genuinely converted and brought from darkness to light, and from death to life.

This is the experience, to one degree or another, of all who are truly converted.  The mind is changed.  The heart is changed.  The will is enabled to live a holy life.  And the mouth confesses, like Paul did, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

Conversion is God’s gracious work of granting men the understanding of their own wretched sinful state, granting them repentance from their sin,  granting them life from the dead, and granting them the power to live a life that is pleasing to Him.  That is biblical conversion.