Genetic Challenges
Recently an international team of scientists reported they had figured out a way to successfully edit DNA in human embryos.[1] The research was aimed at helping families plagued by genetic diseases. These scientists used a gene-editing technique to correct a genetic defect causing a heart disorder that leads seemingly healthy young people to die from heart failure. Scientists say the same approach could be used to prevent a host of inheritable diseases like Huntington’s disease, cystic fibrosis, an inherited form of Alzheimer’s disease and cases of breast and ovarian cancer caused by mutations in the genes.
It’s controversial research. I’m not interested in the debate about the research. I’m interested in what’s driving it. Why are scientists going all the way to a genetic level to try to cure diseases? It’s for this reason: Some of our greatest challenges dwell deep within us. We have diseases that are rooted at a genetic level. And while treatments from the outside may have some impact on the symptoms caused by those diseases, what is driving this research is the hope of attacking the deepest root of those diseases–the genetic code which gives rise to those diseases in the first place. These scientists are acknowledging that some of the greatest health challenges we face dwell deep within us–at a genetic level. We may agree or disagree with what they are trying to do about that. But the fact remains–these defects woven into our genes can create tremendous problems. Some of our greatest challenges dwell deep within us.
Sin Challenges
Paul makes a similar spiritual point in Romans 7:
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! (Rom. 7:17-25 ESV)
Paul wants to talk about an ultimate disease. It’s something he calls “sin.” There are many ways the Bible talks about sin. Here, Paul has in mind one particular way of talking about sin. In this text, sin is a deeply practical and personal issue for Paul. The sin Paul is describing is this: that which keeps us from doing the good we want and causes us to do the evil we do not want. For Paul in this text that’s what sin is. It’s not some deep philosophical issue. It’s not some impractical theological issue. It’s a practical issue. In this text, sin is that which keeps us from doing the good things we want to do and causes us to do the evil things we don’t want to do. This sin that dwells deep within us. Notice that four times Paul uses this word “dwell.”
I have a younger sister back in New Mexico who dropped out of college and has struggled to keep a job and has been in and out of relationships while struggling to be present in the life of her three kids. She has recurring depression. And on my best days I’m convinced that if I invested time in my relationship with her, I might be able to help. If I called her. If I emailed her. If it invested in that relationship, I could be of encouragement and even, perhaps, of spiritual influence. But you know what? That good I want do, I hardly ever do. I let that conviction go under the onslaught of an overflowing inbox of emails, a schedule full of meetings, and another sermon to write. And a whole year can pass, literally, without me having any contact with her at all. Sin is that which keeps me from doing the good I want to do.
What about you? What good do you want to do but you just don’t do? What evil do you do not want to do but continue to do? Paul argues that this is caused by sin that dwells deep within us.
Now, Paul isn’t trying to paint us with one color and say there’s no good at all in us. That’s not what he means when he says “nothing good dwells in me.” Back in Romans 2 Paul talks about people who’ve never had biblical religion and yet by their very nature they end up doing very pious and good things. Simply by virtue of the fact that we are made in God’s image, we are capable of doing good and avoiding evil. Yet sin has also taken up residence within us. It keeps us from reaching the full potential we were created to reach.
In her book, Acedia & Me, [aseedia] Kathleen Norris writes this:[2]
“I have become like the child I once knew who emerged one morning from a noisy, chaotic Sunday-school classroom to inform the adults who had heard the commotion and had come to investigate, ‘We’re being bad, and we don’t know how to stop.‘” [Kathleen Morris]
Paul is writing this truth: Sin, our greatest challenge dwells within us. There’s something going on deep inside of us that causes a struggle. There’s an inner bent. There’s something even deeper than a genetic mutation at work. That’s why Paul says that sin “dwells” in us. That word “dwell” means to take us residence. Our struggle to do what is right and stop what is wrong comes from a very deep place within.
The Failure of External Solutions
And that’s why external attempts to deal with that struggle fall short. External solutions to our internal challenge will always fall short.
Robert Cialdini, a researcher on the theory of persuasion, conducted an experiment at the Petrified Forest in Arizona.[3] The park had a problem, as it made clear on a warning sign:
YOUR HERITAGE IS BEING VANDALIZED EVERY DAY BY THEFT LOSSES OF PETRIFIED WOOD OF 14 TONS A YEAR, MOSTLY A SMALL PIECE AT A TIME.
Cialdini wanted to know if this external appeal was effective. So he and some colleagues ran an experiment. They seeded various trails throughout the forest with loose pieces of petrified wood, ready for stealing. On some trails, they posted this sign warning not to steal; other trails got no sign. The result? The trails with the warning signs had nearly three times more theft than the trails with no signs.
Cialdini concluded that the warning sign, designed to send a moral message, perhaps sent a different message as well. Something like: Wow, the petrified wood is going fast—I’d better get mine now! Or: Fourteen tons a year!? Surely it won’t matter if I take a few pieces.
The external solution had limited impact on that internal problem.
Still, we tend to believe that external pressure will resolve our internal problem.
This is why so many people were shocked when, in 2010, Celebration, FL experienced its first murder, and then three days later, its first suicide.[4] Celebration was built by Disney as an ideal community. Picturesque and perfect houses, landscapes, streets and shops. It would seem that there wasn’t a blade of grass out of place. It was the ultimate attempt to create an external environment free from evil. And yet even this idyllic environment couldn’t keep people from murdering one another or from experiencing despair and depression.
This, in part, is what Paul points to in Romans 7 when he says this:
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. (Rom. 7:9-10 ESV)
This is a complex argument which continues through Romans 7. But one of Paul’s points is that the external law–rules and commandments–had limited impact on sin. No matter how many laws religion throws at this internal struggle, we still struggle to do what is right and wrestle with doing what is wrong. External solutions to our internal challenge will always fall short.
The Holy Spirit
That’s why, Paul writes in Romans 8, God has come to dwell in us by his Holy Spirit:
9 You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. 10 But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. 11 If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. (Rom. 8:9-11 ESV)
Paul contrasts his statements in Rom. 7 with these statements in Rom. 8. In Rom. 7 he tells us multiple times that sin dwells in us. In Rom. 8 he tells us that the Holy Spirit dwells in us.
Last Sunday I mentioned Dallas Willard, a longtime author and speaker on the spiritual life. Willard described something he called “the golden triangle.[5] Ideally, Willard said, we grow by being shaped by three things, like the three sides of a triangle. In a sense, these are the three things that help us grow beyond the struggle of Romans 7.
- First, there’s the supernatural work of the Holy Spirit shaping us from the inside out. This is God’s work on us.
- Second, there’s the impact of spiritual practices like prayer, fasting, and Bible study. This is our work on us.
- Third, there’s the formative work of suffering. This is life’s work on us. We looked at this last Sunday.
Here, Paul’s calling attention to the critical role of the Holy Spirit. Our greatest hope comes from the fact that the Holy Spirit dwells within us.
- D. Greer writes that the work of the Holy Spirit in contrast to the work of sin is like a balloon.[6] Imagine that we are a balloon. And we are made to fly. But, filled with oxygen, we keep falling to the floor.
So, we try every external solution we can think of, even religion, to keep the balloon flying. We try rules that smack the balloon back up. We try routines that smack the balloon back up. But every time the balloon just falls back down.
The good the balloon wants to do–fly–it can’t. The evil it doesn’t want to do–drop–it keeps on doing. And no amount of smacking will keep it up in the air. Eventually it’s just going to fall to the floor.
And, eventually, people get tired of being smacked–whether it’s God supposedly smacking them, or the church, or themselves.
But what if, Greer says, there was a way to completely change that balloon from the inside? What if you filled that balloon with helium on the inside? What if, instead of smacking it on the outside, you found a way to replace the oxygen with helium on the inside? Then, you wouldn’t need to smack it would you? Then the balloon would float higher and higher entirely on it’s own, driven by a radical transformation that had taken place deep within.
This is what God’s doing by coming to dwell in us by his Spirit. He’s changing us from the inside. Renewing us. Changing our oxygen to helium so that we can fly in the way we were meant to–with no need for constant whacking and smacking from external sources.
Revolution
This then calls for a revolution in the way many of us deal with our spiritual life. For many of us, the spiritual life is all about rules and commands. If we can just get the right rules down, we’ll finally overcome sin. If we can just try hard enough, we’ll finally overcome sin. But what Paul’s pointing to here is something radically different. If we accept his reality, then what matters most is learning to do life with the Holy Spirit. We live most fully when we learn to do life with the Holy Spirit. What matters most according to this text is being as full of the Holy Spirit as possible and giving the Spirit as much room as possible to do life with us. This then, becomes the key to flying high.
In fact, Paul summarizes the spiritual life here as being led by the Spirit:
14 For all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. (Rom. 8:14 ESV)
The spiritual life then, our life as a church then, is primarily about finding ways to become more sensitive to the work and leading of the Holy Spirit. That means the spiritual life becomes more about things like this:
- Cultivating Indifference – The ability to desire what the Spirit wants more than what you want.
- Seeking Wisdom – Knowing the Spirit’s way may appear foolish.
- Paying Attention – Trusting that the Spirit may speak/ lead through many means including Scripture, promptings, events, movements of the heart, etc.
- Gathering Community – Surrounding yourself with others who can help you sense the Spirit’s guidance.
At Home
But ultimately, this text is a statement about God’s love and relationship. Paul emphasizes how, in Rom. 8:3 God responded to this deep internal challenge we face by first sending his Son. Second, God responded by sending his Spirit to dwell within us. Elsewhere in 2 Cor. (7:12-23) Paul uses that “dwell” to describe the way a husband comes to dwell with a wife, or a wife comes to dwell with a husband. In the same intimate and loving way, God comes to dwell with us by his Spirit.
Our daughter Jordan goes to college in Nashville. Like many, we’ve had to adjust to one of our kids not living at home with us. And we relish those times when she does come back home–like right now. She’s home for eight days, having finished her summer job as a Children’s Ministry Intern, and waiting for orientation for junior year nursing students to start. She’s living with us at home for eight days. And how we enjoy having her presence with us for those eight days! Paul’s writing about an even greater joy–God himself making his home within us every single day, creating a circumstance where every day we wake up with God at home. Every night we go to bed with God at home. God by our side 24/7. This is the gift of the Holy Spirit. God dwelling with us. This is how we live. This is how we fly.
Benediction
And Paul’s benediction speaks about the power of this Spirit:
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Rom. 15:13 ESV)
[1] http://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2017/08/02/540975224/scientists-precisely-edit-dna-in-human-embryos-to-fix-a-disease-gene
[2] Kathleen Norris, Acedia & Me (Riverhead Hardcover, 2008), p. 16
[3] Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner, Think Like a Freak (William Morrow, 2014), pp 115-116
[4] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/8180132/Murder-and-suicide-in-Celebration-the-perfect-town-built-by-Disney.html
[5] http://www.dwillard.org/articles/artview.asp?artID=105
[6] J. D. Greer, Gospel: Recovering the Power That Made Christianity Revolutionary (B&H Publishing, 2011), pp. 97-98
