Blessed Are The Bankrupt (Romans 7:24–25)

The most unsettling line in Romans 7 is also one of the most freeing: “O wretched man that I am.” We sit with Paul’s confession and argue that the war within is not proof you are failing at the Christian life, but often proof you are waking up to the holiness of God and the stubbornness of the flesh. The goal is not to pretend the fight is over, but to learn how to fight it honestly without despair. 

Along the way, we cut through a few popular escape routes. We talk about how knowing the right thing doesn’t automatically produce doing the right thing, why chasing a dramatic spiritual experience or “second blessing” can become a distraction, and why blaming every sin on the devil or a named “demon” quietly trains us to avoid responsibility. Romans 7 never shifts the blame outward, and neither can we. 

Then we turn toward hope that is sturdier than hype. We unpack Paul’s “body of death” language, why it feels so heavy, and why the answer is not self-improvement but Jesus Christ, who delivers us from the penalty of sin, strengthens us in daily dependence, and will one day remove sin’s presence entirely. We connect it to Jesus’ words about being poor in spirit and to the tax collector’s prayer, “God, be merciful to me,” as the posture that actually leads to life. 

If you’ve ever felt both sorrow over sin and gratitude for grace at the same time, this conversation puts words to that tension and points you to a faithful path forward. Subscribe, share this with a friend who feels stuck, and leave a review with the line that hit you hardest. What part of the war within do you most want to face honestly?

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Transcript

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I acknowledge the war within of God, and I am willing to battle it daily, and I thank God through Christ for my present deliverance and that coming future deliverance. And when I sin, I have no one to blame but myself, and I repent of that sin and I ask for strength today. And I, the wretched man that I am, thank you, oh God, for

Acknowledging The War Within

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Jesus Christ my Lord. You say both. You live in both. This is the war within I don't know if you were following the news a couple of days ago when a story broke, at least in some circles, about an Egyptian lawyer who sits as the dean of the law faculty of one of Egypt's universities

A Strange Lawsuit As Illustration

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of law, which is a rather intriguing thought that he actually sits as the dean of this school. He's planning to sue the world of Jews. He's going to sue the world of Jews for plundering Egypt thousands of years ago, as recorded in the Bible, that when Egyptians let the Israelites go, it says on the book of Exodus, chapter 12, verse 35 and 36, that the Israelites plundered Egypt. They were given the gold and silver and fine clothing, and so the state of Egypt today is not as good as it could be unless the Jews pay it back. And so he's now trying to find out what court to go to to find out if plunder has a statute of limitations. If he can somehow pull this off. The fascinating thing about Paul's testimony in Romans 7, verse 24, is that it comes from the pen, as we've learned, of a maturing, deeply devoted believer who's reached the truth. And the truth is not, oh, wretched people who live around me. It is, oh, wretched man who lives inside of me. We arrive at the point where he says, Who will set me free from this body of death? You know, our pastor

Paul’s Honest Cry In Romans 7

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of sports ministry talked about this morning. You know, there's going to be a golf outing. I would like to go. I probably ought to go. If I go, the worms are going to tremble with fear because that's about where my balls go, and I could get out there and hit it a little bit. And if I teed that ball up and stood over it, I could simply claim my life verse for my golf game, which would be the things that I want to do, I do not do, and the things that I know I shouldn't do, I do. I go out every once in a while with my uh boys. That's really like to go out and play with. They're now taller, they're bigger, they're stronger than I am. Don't tell them that. They still the secret. I get my golf club out and I tee up the ball and stand over it, and I know exactly what I'm supposed to do. I'm left-handed, so that's the first problem. I can't fix that. And I swing, and that ball, I'm heading this direction. I thought that ball takes a few little bounces and jumps in the pond. Because my sons are watching me, I refuse to say anything I shouldn't say, and so I just step over here and I let one of them tee up, and they can crush that ball. But guess what I do when my son tees up his ball? I'm over here and I go, Don't forget to keep your head down. You're standing a little too close to the ball. Now, fortunately, my sons have never looked at me and said, Dad, where's your ball right now? Mr. Waterlong yourself, you know? I'm not gonna listen. I don't want my ball to do what your ball just did. Well, I know, and they do too. I could probably coach somebody into improving their swing, but just don't watch me do it myself. Knowing does not necessarily mean doing will occur. There's another. Some pursue new experiences and are told and taught that what they need is some new experience with Christ, some dramatic encounter with the Holy Spirit, some moment when the light shines and mysteries break forth into plain view and you're liberated from yourself and sinful desires. It might be speaking in tongues, it might be a second blessing, it might be some special commitment or some moment of vow, some

The Myth Of A Breakthrough Experience

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moment of worship, some second work of grace or whatever, something that brings you to a state of perpetual victory where you never have to battle it again. You're sort of over it, you're above it. You can feel sorry for all the people, the commoners that are still struggling with it, but you've had the experience and now you're over it. Well, if that's true, then Paul would surely have arrived on the mountaintop, right? Think of what he experienced. Think of what he experienced. Listen to some of them as I have compiled a short review of his rather breathtaking resume. Personally, arrested by the risen Lord along the Damascus Road, and he heard that voice audibly speaking in Acts 9, 4, that we have probably said to ourselves, if we could just hear his voice, that would set us apart. That would solve it. He heard it. In Acts chapter 9, verse 4, he was secondly privately tutored by the Holy Spirit for three years. Galatians 1, verse 12. Paul was then given miraculous ability to heal, and even those who touched his garments were at one point healed of their diseases. In Acts chapter 19, we're told verse 12. Paul even raised somebody from the dead. Imagine that experience. Paul raised somebody from the dead. I mean, wouldn't that be the mountain? Would you ever come down? I have wondered. I could come home from work, my wife says, Sweetie, how'd your day go? Well, great. Went to a funeral today, just decided to raise the guy from the dead. Everybody's happy and pleased. It's been a great day. Raise somebody from the dead. He had been taken out of body into heaven for a personal tour, 2 Corinthians 12. He had personal visions as Christ came to him with revelation, Acts 18. He was one of the apostles, Galatians 1, Romans 1, and other verses. In summary, he was the leading missionary, he was the leading church planter. He was the leading brilliant theologian. He was the leading author and pastor of his generation. And after 25 years of incredible ministry experiences and personal visits of Christ and the Holy Spirit and private instruction, you would think he knew the formula. He had had the experience. If there was something to know, he knew it. If there was something to experience, he experienced by now. He should be breathing the celestial air of mountaintop experiences. And we would all stand down here and say, Paul, what's it like on the mountaintop? Yet Paul cried after knowing what he knew and after having experienced what he did. After 25 years of faithful commitment and dedication and worship and service, oh wretched man that I am. Someone says, Well, but Paul experienced, you know, beyond that. You're having a hard time getting to the latter part of that verse, you know. The next verse, thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. You're right. This is a great statement of victory. Some would say it signals the end of the battle then for Paul. Well, if it ended the battle for Paul, why in the very next breath would he go beyond that phrase in the latter part of verse 25 and say, so then, here's my summary. On the one hand, I myself, with my mind, am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh, the law of sin. In other words, why did he have a continual battle within, between what he knew was right, the law of his mind, that new mind, the law of God, and what he did that was wrong, the law of his flesh that sometimes sinned. Why did the battle remain in Paul between his new mind and his old flesh? It is because the battle remains. The truth is, by taking this passage, at face value, literally, there is no formula. It would be wonderful if I could tell you five words. Here it is. Here's the formula. If I could give you some secret. If I could tell you to pursue some experience. None of that will remove from the maturing believer the war within. Third way I would add to this list that Christians are pursuing in an attempt, I believe, to avoid the responsibility for sin and excuse their refusal to personally battle sin is what I would call spiritual deflection. Whenever you're having a problem with sin, it's the devil's fault, right? Blame it on the devil. The devil gets blamed for a lot of things I do. It's a demon's doing. So you need to go to some deliverance ministry and be freed from the demons

No Formula, The Battle Remains

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of those sins. And we've given sins now demons, attributes. It is now the demon of lust. It isn't the sin of lust that you do, it's the demon of lust that's making you do it. Or it is the demon of pride or the demon

Blaming Demons To Avoid Responsibility

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of gluttony. Now you can even be freed from the demon of debt. I turned on the television some time ago and watched a pastor tell his crowd of thousands and a television audience, I'm sure of millions, to send him their credit card bills, and he would pray over them as he collected them, and then the people would be released from their demon of debt. Debt is now a demon. And you send him your MasterCard bill, and he will pray for deliverance, and voila, no more debt. I was actually tempted to send mine in. That'd be great if that would work, wouldn't it? Well, what about compulsive spending? Oh, don't tell me about that. You know, what about discipline? Oh, don't talk to me about that. What about financial planning? Oh, what about personal responsibility to creditors whose money we are using? None of that. It's a demon's fault. Well, this particular view has a generation of naive, impressionable, misled believers, some of them very passionate about their walk with Christ under the impression that bad thoughts and bad deeds are not their fault and not their responsibility. It's a demon they need to exercise. It is the devil they need to bind. Well, let me tell you, ladies and gentlemen, Paul knew all about demons. He knew all about the devil. He knew everything you probably would ever want to know about spiritual warfare. He wrote the manual on true spiritual warfare. He sensed it in a young woman who followed them, Acts 16. He warned the believers about the wiles of the devil, the methodist, the methods, the strategies of the devil in Ephesians 6. Paul was no novice. He knew full well what spiritual warfare was all about. And there is, ladies and gentlemen, not one mention of a demon in Romans 7. There is no devil here. Paul is not shifting any blame to an unseen world, and he doesn't allow us either. He is saying, in effect, my primary problem is me. And you know what? The flesh is impossible to cast out. So let's just call it a demon and try to be rid of it. Paul says, who's going to set us free from this flesh that we battle? What does he mean? Well, a number of things. Let me take you first to just simple history that gives us the culture of this phrase. During the days of Paul, Roman tyrants would often chain the dead bodies of his soldiers upon the backs of enemy captive soldiers following a battle, and they were made to carry those dead corpses upon their backs back to their hometowns. What a gruesome task that would be. Certain types of criminals during the days of Paul were executed by the

What “Body Of Death” Meant

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Romans. In fact, some report that this practice actually began near Tarsus, where Paul was born. It was special brutality. Sometimes, if a man committed murder, he was bound hand to hand, face to face, torso to torso, leg to leg with the corpse of his victim, and then thrown out into the heat of the Mediterranean sun or hung on a cross. And as the corpse decayed, it literally ate death into the living man who often died insane. Even centuries later, Great Britain had the practice that seamen who killed or took the life of another seaman while at sea, they would bind, they would chain the living murderer to the corpse of the one he killed and throw them both overboard and they would both drown. He would be pulled down by the corpse of the one he killed. Bound, as it were, to this body of death. I believe Paul has this kind of scene in his mind when he cries out, Who will deliver me from this body of death? Bound to him was this sense of a rotting, decaying, corrupted, sinful flesh. No wonder people want to think he's talking about somebody else. Certainly an unbeliever. Certainly an immature believer. That scene is too much for me. I don't like to talk about myself like that. That's why we've changed the hymn on our hymnal. Where it used to say a worm is I, we now say a sinner like me. That makes a little bit better, more palatable phraseology for us. We didn't change it, by the way. In fact, when we get to that point, I still sing a worm as I. Because I need to remind myself of this body of flesh. Paul asks, Who will deliver me? Do you think he doesn't know the answer? He knows the answer. The Greek verb rustai, who will deliver me, was used to refer to the act of a soldier who rushes to the aid of a fallen comrade who's crying out for help because he's fallen into enemy hands. Paul is in enemy hands, as it were, and the enemy is his own corrupted flesh. Who will rescue him from, get this, himself, the deliverer, he goes on to say, is Jesus Christ, who delivers us at that moment of conversion from the penalty of sin, who delivers us presently, daily as we submit to him, and who will, future tense in this text here, I think he's looking off into the future, who will deliver us eternally

Christ Rescues Us From Ourselves

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from this corrupting flesh, as this flesh is put away, as this corruptible is put off and placed upon us is the incorruptible, that glorified body, if you can believe it, coursing through our veins the inability to sin, coursing through our mind, the inability to ever have a sinful thought in that glorified state, perfected and confirmed in holiness. He yearns for that day. The deliverer is Christ. Listen to this. The answer to this body of death is his body of death. For he bore in his body our sin. He bore upon himself the corpse, as it were, of our fleshly deeds. He paid for it all and will one day entirely deliver us from even its very possibility and presence. So Paul isn't crying here, a prayer of defeat, but a prayer of reality and a prayer of acknowledgement. He is both sinful and he is saved. He is in agony over his sinfulness and he is rejoicing at the same time over his savior. You don't stop in either place. You don't ignore your sinfulness. If you do for a moment, you could be pulled back into its ways. And you don't ignore the Savior. To ignore him would bring great and lasting despair. You live with a sense of both. Oh, wretched man that I am. Oh, but thanks be to God. I thank my God through Jesus Christ my Lord. And the more you mature, the more you are aware of his grand grace and holy character, and the more you are at the same time aware of your great corruption. Robert Haldane, a Scottish theologian who lived some time ago, put it this way: He said, We perceive ourselves to be sinners in direct proportion as we have discovered the holiness of God. If you have not discovered your corruption, you have yet to discover the holiness of God. This is the testimony of Paul. The truth is, we're just not used to hearing it, are we? We're used to hearing somebody get up on a platform and talk about how they won the war. You know, my three steps to victory. Six things that fixed all my relationships, my steps of financial victory, and all of that, and how I overcame the flesh. And we buy their books and we listen to them, right? We want somebody that can tell us they won. Paul says, I am still fighting. And so are you. True repentance, conversion, true faith, a true attitude and spirit of contriteness and humility. Here's a prayer in Psalm 38, verse 3. Listen to David as he writes, There is no health in my bones because of my sin, for my iniquities are gone over my head. As a heavy burden, they weigh too much for me. My wounds grow foul and fester because of my folly. I am bent over and greatly bowed down. I go mourning

Brokenness As A Mark Of Faith

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all day long, for my loins are filled with burning, and there is no soundness in my flesh. I am benumbed and badly crushed. I groan because of the agitation of my heart. It would do Christians well to pray this prayer. Brokenness is no longer a part of our modern day formula for those who pursue the formula. Contriteness is not the experience to pursue for those who pursue the experience. Well, I want you to listen to Jesus Christ as he delivers a sermon. And I want to take you there just in your minds without taking time to turn. It's the sermon you know is the Sermon on the Mount. He delivered that very first sermon, and when you come to the end of the text, it says that his audience was amazed. That's a little weak. It literally means they were stunned. They were beside themselves, ek plaiso. They were totally

Blessed Are The Poor In Spirit

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turned upside down in their minds as to what they had heard. Why? Because Jesus Christ turned everything upside down. Everything they had ever learned in Sunday school. He said to them, in his first words, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of what? Of heaven. In other words, the people who are getting into heaven are poor in spirit. And what does that mean? Well, in the days of Christ, there were two kinds of poor people. One poor person or kind of poor person was the penis. This was the individual who had a job who went to work and at the end of the day he got paid because they got paid every day. And he took that money that he had and he paid the debts that he had that day, and he got enough food to eat and just enough for the morrow. And then he went to work again and he got paid, and he got just enough money to make ends meet and to care for his family and put clothes on their backs and enough food in their bellies to last another day. If he got sick, he didn't get paid. There was nothing to fall back on. There was no such thing as financial security. That's why they would dig a hole and put their goods in it. There was no bank, there was very little ways of getting any kind of security unless you were extremely wealthy and you had financial resources. You were able to even put money in the temple. The average poor person just lived day by day, the panacea. But then there was another kind, the potokas. The potokas didn't have a job. They didn't have any money. They didn't have any clothing. They didn't have any food. They were totally destitute, totally dependent upon somebody else to give them food, to give them shelter. These were the village beggars. These were the bankrupt. These were the ones that had no way to provide for themselves. And when Jesus Christ said, Here is the happy one, here is the fulfilled one, here is the blessed one, he said, Blessed are the tokoi, blessed are the spiritually bankrupt, the destitute, the ones who are, in effect, totally poverty stricken in and of themselves. They have nothing to offer God, they are totally dependent upon Him. Blessed are the spiritual beggars for righteousness. They get to go into the kingdom of heaven. Not the people that pushed a peanut with their nose or walked around the earth or added all these things or burned the candles or prayed their prayers or showed up in church or whatever. Those who found they were absolutely destitute and entirely poor, who came to God to receive from him what they entirely needed, the righteousness of Christ. Blessed are the bankrupt. See, the Apostle Paul is merely reflecting that kind of spirit and attitude in Romans chapter 7. And unfortunately, we live in a day and in the midst of a generation that knows little of the spirit of contritess and spiritual abasement and humility. The Lord illustrated it for us. He told about the time when two men came into the temple, you remember? They were both Jews. They both came in to pray. They had rights to the God of Israel. So they thought. One was a Pharisee. The Pharisee was the icon, the model of religious and spiritual maturity. And the other one was the tax collector. You remember? That was the icon, the category

Pharisee Pride And Tax Collector Mercy

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of correct. This was the Jew who sold to the Romans or purchased from the Romans the right to turn around and tax his fellow Jewish brethren. And so he would tax them and give Rome their due. But if you remember anything about your study through the Gospels, you know the tax collectors were poor or wealthy. Very wealthy, right? Why? How'd they get that way? Because they taxed their Jewish brethren more than was due. They gave Rome the due and pocketed the rest. You remember Zacchaeus, the tax collector who came by faith to Christ. He said, I'll immediately give back what I have stolen. He came in to pray too. And the Pharisee stood and he prayed. You remember? Filled with self-assurance and self-confidence. And he prayed and said, Lord, I thank you that I am not like other people. That's how his prayer began. If you start that way, stop. You are praying, as the text says, the Pharisee prayed to himself. I like that. He prayed thus to himself. Lord, I thank thee that I'm not like other people. Swindlers, unruly, or unjust, adulterers. And then he must have peeked. And he saw the tax collector standing over there, and he added, Oh yes, Lord, and like that tax gatherer. And while he talked to himself, the tax gatherer was praying. And he was beating his chest. And he was saying over and over again, God, be merciful to me, the sinner. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. God, be merciful to me, the sinner. And Jesus said, I'll tell you something. The Pharisee went home righteous in his own eyes. The tax collector went home righteous in the eyes of God. You want to know what I had discovered in this diary of Paul here in Romans chapter 7. I have discovered a man totally, entirely unimpressed with himself and even his own reputation, and a man who was totally, entirely impressed with the reputation of God. Poor in spirit. Yet filled with the treasure of heaven. You don't have to walk 24,000 miles to impress God. You don't have to gravel on the sidewalk. You don't have to take the skin off your nose unless you want to take it off your nose by simply bowing before God and saying with humility and at the same time great joy. Oh, wretched man that I am. Thanks be to God. I acknowledge the war within, O God, and I am willing to battle it daily, and I thank God through Christ for my present deliverance and that coming future deliverance. And when I sin, I have no one to blame but myself, and I repent of that sin and I ask

Living In Both Until The End

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for strength today. And I, the wretched man that I am, thank you, oh God, for Jesus Christ, my Lord. You say both. You live in both. This is the war within, and you will not finish it until you stand before Him and you want to hear him say to you, who like Paul, say, I fought the fight. Well done. Well done. Well done. So Paul closes his diary with that thought.