This One Is Not For You (1)

For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death. But now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and not in oldness of the letter. Romans 7:5-6 NASB

Sinful passions – Some of Man’s greatest advancements seem to be the result of intense suffering. This might be best exemplified in the arts. Genius is often synonymous with agony and the great masterpieces were sometimes the result of personal despair, acute psychological struggle and emotional trauma. Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Cezanne, Mozart come to mind. But we find similar patterns in Copernicus, Einstein and Carroll (yes, that man who wrote about Alice). Can we see the same thing in the prophets? In Paul?

We have a tendency to lean toward Pollyanna preaching. We want to feel good and hear positive messages. We don’t like looking at the dark side. And there’s plenty of material for uplifting sermons in the Bible. But there’s also something else. There’s the acknowledgement, no, more than that; there’s the struggle of emotional strain, of agony, sorrow and grief. Forgiveness and mercy don’t mean much without trial and tribulation. Yeshua died on the cross. The message of the resurrection is impotent without that fact.

If your relationship with God is going great, if you’re feeling blessed and prosperous, then this investigation in Romans isn’t really for you. You can return to singing praise songs and smiling at the world. You’re experiencing makarios.[1] But if you feel like cutting off your ear, or running away to an island, or hiding under the covers, then maybe it’s worth looking at the agony of Paul’s description. And maybe facing this darkness will help you find the light.

Paul notes that a certain kind of passion produces death. Well, there are lots of passions and not all of them are bad, so we might as well start with an analysis of the words behind “sinful passions.” What are pathemata hamartion? The first thing we discover is that Paul is not talking about fervor or enthusiasm. That’s how we think of passion—something that ignites us with energy and emotion. But that’s not what the Greek term means. The Greek idea is about suffering, but in a Greek context. It’s not the way we think of suffering, i.e., pain and sorrow. Those are just symptoms. For the Greeks, pathemata focuses on what happens to us rather than what we initiate. Pathemata “means ‘misfortune,’ ‘state of suffering,’ ‘sorrow,’ and occasionally ‘emotion.’”[2] Paul suggests that these experiences are somehow tied to sarx, the “flesh.” We’ll have to look into that. But what we know so far is that these experiences are not necessarily occasions that we bring upon ourselves by deliberate choices. They are more like finding yourself in the midst of an unhappy situation that you might have chosen to avoid but weren’t able to. You might have made choices that started this process, but now the process has momentum and seems to be carrying you along even if you protest. Now you are being swept away even though you never intended that to happen.

What we’ve learned so far is that Paul isn’t excoriating us for deliberate immoral decisions. He isn’t chiding his readers about their inability to control their desires. What he’s describing is what we all know to be true. We start out in one direction, thinking we can manage things. But one choice leads to another and pretty soon we realize that managing the consequences is just a delusion. Those choices turn out to be a force of their own, now pushing us along a path we didn’t want until . . . until we crash.

This passage isn’t for you, you who have life under control, who have turned your circumstances over to God and are bending the yetzer ha’ra to His will. No, you don’t need to be reminded about how out-of-control life can be. You don’t need a warning that small detours lead to head-on collisions. So you can ignore this.

But the rest of us can’t.

Topical Index: pathemata hamartion, sinful passions, sarx, flesh, Romans 7:5-6

[1] “lucky” as in the Beatitudes (see The Lucky Life by Skip Moen).

[2] W. Michaelis, páthēma in Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (802). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.