Romans 6:23 “You Cannot”

Here’s my fairly literal translation of these verses:

²³For the wages of the sin [are] death, but the free gift of God [is] eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Before I leave Romans 6, there is one more thought I want to record. This whole chapter has been about this choice before you and me, whether to serve sin and die or to follow Jesus and live. Our cliché way to say it is that it’s a choice whether to serve sin or to serve God. I hesitate to put it that way only because it is so cliché – probably no thinking person would ever stand up and say, “I’ve decided to serve sin!” On the other hand, the most vile, carping Pharisee is quite sure he’s serving God.

This whole business of “serving God” is worth just a little more pondering.

A passage I find extremely instructive is Joshua 24:14-24. For the sake of consideration, here it is in its entirety:

¹⁴“Now fear the Lord and serve Him with all faithfulness. Throw away the gods your ancestors worshiped beyond the Euphrates River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. ¹⁵But if serving the Lord seems undesirable to you, then choose for yourselves this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served beyond the Euphrates, or the gods of the Amorites, in whose land you are living. But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” 

¹⁶Then the people answered, “Far be it from us to forsake the Lord to serve other gods! ¹⁷It was the Lord our God Himself who brought us and our parents up out of Egypt, from that land of slavery, and performed those great signs before our eyes. He protected us on our entire journey and among all the nations through which we traveled. ¹⁸And the Lord drove out before us all the nations, including the Amorites, who lived in the land. We too will serve the Lord, because He is our God.” 

¹⁹Joshua said to the people, “You are not able to serve the Lord. He is a holy God; he is a jealous God. He will not forgive your rebellion and your sins. ²⁰If you forsake the Lord and serve foreign gods, He will turn and bring disaster on you and make an end of you, after He has been good to you.”

²¹But the people said to Joshua, “No! We will serve the Lord.”

²²Then Joshua said, “You are witnesses against yourselves that you have chosen to serve the Lord.”

“Yes, we are witnesses,” they replied.

²³“Now then,” said Joshua, “throw away the foreign gods that are among you and yield your hearts to the Lord, the God of Israel.”

²⁴And the people said to Joshua, “We will serve the Lord our God and obey him.”

Joshua here puts before the Israelites the same matter we’re discussing in Romans 6: “Choose you this day whom you will serve.” For any thinking Christian, this would seem an obvious and simple matter. “Of course I’ll serve the Lord!” That is exactly what the Israelites said, but notice Joshua’s answer in v.19: “You are not able to serve the Lord.” The old KJV put it quite bluntly, “You cannot serve the Lord.” Then notice their answer in v.21: “No! We will serve the Lord.” They go on in v.24 to say, “The Lord our God we will serve, and His voice we will obey.”

As I’ve said before, I believe, in a sense, this is the entire point of the Old Testament: You can give people even God’s law and their natural response is, “All that the Lord commands us, we will do!” “Yup, we’ve got this one. You can count on us! Just give us the rules and watch us knock’em out of the park. Yup, yup, yup. No problem. We can do this!”

And how did they do? Is not the entire OT a record of their total failure? When it came down to it, they even murdered the Messiah Himself!

What is going on? Joshua warned them way back then, “You cannot serve the Lord!” I’m reminded of Deut. 5:29 where the same thing had happened. Moses gave the Israelites the Law and they responded, “All that the Lord commands us, we will do!” In response, the Lord said to Moses, “Oh that they had such a heart in them…”

What they did not understand was exactly this problem: they did not have such a heart in them. Joshua tried to warn them. “You cannot serve the Lord.” They didn’t listen. Can I say this was their problem? They should have said to Joshua, “What do you mean?” and he could have explained to them, “You do not have such a heart in you.” Unless somehow the Lord enables you, you yourselves will utterly fail. “For without Me, you can do nothing,” Jesus said.

This is precisely the point at which you and I need to cast aside our clichés and face reality. Everything Paul is saying in Romans 6, you and I cannot do. If our response is the same flippant, “All the Lord commands us, we will do,” we will fail just as miserably as the Israelites. It is imperative that we realize, when the Lord said of them, “Oh that they had such a heart in them,” He already had a solution in mind. He would do exactly that – give them “such a heart.” Throughout the OT, He promised one day to send His Spirit. In the NT, we learn clearly that His solution to our problem is to actually put His very Holy Spirit inside of us. Jesus went to Heaven and, on the Day of Pentecost, He poured out His Holy Spirit, not just to be with us, but to be in us!

It is no longer true of us believers that we “do not have such a heart in us.” In fact we do!

However, it is imperative we all realize, that Spirit is not our spirit! My spirit is still rotten, but God has placed within me His Holy Spirit and, if I will let Him, He can actually enable me to “serve the Lord.” I can’t, but I can!

The Israelites missed it. They thought they could serve the Lord. I don’t doubt for a minute, they really did intend to. Yet they failed to see, they could not. You and I, though we may be NT Christians, though we may know that we are Holy Spirit indwelt, yet we must not make their mistake of thinking somehow we can pull this off.

Now we are back to relationship. You and I need to “draw near to God.” We need to come to Him and tell Him, “Lord, I want to serve you, but I know all too well, I cannot on my own. Help me be very aware of your Holy Spirit’s presence in my life and help me to let Him be the power that enables me to in fact ‘Reckon myself dead to sin and alive to Christ, and to present the members of my body as instruments of righteousness.’ Help me to obey from the heart.”

I know chapters 7 and 8 are headed exactly in this direction and I look forward to studying them. However, I would suggest you and I will gain little from them if we emerge from chapter 6 saying, “Yup, yup, yup. I’ve got this. No problem. Serve the Lord? Sure thing! That’s me! Everybody just stand back and watch me knock it out of the park!”

We need to plod ahead keenly aware that “I cannot do it,” then humbly, prayerfully head into our lives today, depending on the Lord’s Holy Spirit to in fact enable us to do what we’ve been called to do. He would have me to love Him and to love people. If I’m humbly willing, He can actually make it happen! I can’t, but I can!

As Romans 6 ends, “For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life.” On my own, I can only earn “wages” and die in the process. How much better to accept from God’s hand this gift of eternal life through Jesus!  It is a gift. It is from Him. May I be humble enough to receive it. Then may I today enjoy this “life which is eternal!”