July 5, 2026 - Romans 7:14-25 - Proper 9
I donât think there can be much argument against pizza being known as a divine gift from God. It just has so much going for it. Bread, cheese, flavorful sauce, meat, meat, more meat, and pineapple, which everyone knows helps highlight the meat, all combined into one dish. Proof of Godâs love and providence.
So itâs perfectly understandable why, when youâre sitting there at Hideaway, having already eaten a couple of slices of freshly made pizza, why you might ask yourself whether youâre going to eat another slice, or maybe two.
Itâs a question Iâve asked myself more times than I can count. Am I actually still hungry? Do I need to eat another slice? You list off all of the pros and cons. While I never balk at leftover pizza, the pizza will still never taste as good as it does right now, fresh out of the oven. The pizza is also delicious and deserves to be eaten by someone who will appreciate it. Whatâs more, as a gift from God, I wouldnât want to offend God by refusing to eat it. On the other hand, if I eat too much, I might regret it later.
Predictably, the arguments against eating more rarely win out. Just as predictably, I usually regret it later. Itâs a wonder I havenât learned this lesson by now. You could argue that eating too much pizza isnât really a sin in a Ten Commandments sense, but being a poor steward of Godâs gifts, both the pizza and my own body, would still fall into that category. Itâs true that sometimes youâre looking at that extra slice and you really arenât sure if youâre still hungry or not. Sometimes you eat a little more than you should because you know the next meal will be a long time coming and youâll need that energy to make it through. There are some good reasons why you might eat that extra slice.
But, if youâre like me, those usually arenât the reasons you do. You eat the slice, knowing that youâll enjoy it for about 5 minutes. Then itâll be down there shoving its way into your already full stomach, which promptly begins complaining loudly. Not only that, but all of that food saps your energy and you end up tired all afternoon while your digestive system tries to deal with your abusive behavior. In the end, that 5 minutes of enjoyment turns into an afternoon of discomfort and fatigue.
I know all of this. Iâve been through it many times. Yet I know that the next time Iâm at Hideaway Iâll be wrestling with the very same dilemma. Sometimes my better sense wins out. Sometimes it doesnât. You might say this because Iâm a very slow learner and need to go through this lesson many, many times before I figure it out. But thatâs not the case. Iâve learned the lesson. When Iâm already full and Iâm looking at that next slice of pizza, I know exactly what will happen if I eat it. I know the consequences will be entirely deserved. And yet, as often as not, Iâll do it anyway.
Biologists, sociologists, and historians will argue that one of the things that separates mankind from animals is that we are rational beings. We can reason and create. We can use our intellects to solve problems in ways no animal can. I think there is ample evidence to show that many times we are anything but rational. Animals donât have these same kinds of problems. There are times when an animal might gorge itself, but only when it has a very specific reason for doing so. Bears preparing to hibernate, for example. In instances such as this, animals are far more logical than we are.
St. Paulâs statement here confronts us with an uncomfortable truth. A serious examination of his words forces us to reconsider what we think about ourselves. Our ideas of goodness and righteousness end up being very selective. I think about the good things I do for people. I think about how considerate I am or how helpful. I add up all of the good things Iâve done and present this as a measure of who I am.
Even if all of those things really counted, they donât explain all of the other things I end up doing for no good reason at all. There are times you can claim ignorance or uncertainty. That isnât really an excuse but itâs at least an explanation. There are plenty of other times I have no such explanation. I have no excuse. I did something stupid. I knew it was stupid. I had no illusion that any real good was going to come of it. The best I can say is that I thought the very temporary and very fleeting pleasure or benefit would outweigh the long term consequences. Even then, Iâm not even really fooling myself.
Where St. Paul is bemoaning his sad situation here, he is also giving voice to a fact of human life that we really donât like. If we were truly as good, noble, compassionate, righteous, and loving as we said we were, as we imagined ourselves to be, we would never do many of the things we do on a regular basis. We end up being cruel, rude, vindictive, and even abusive to the very people we love. We know we shouldnât be. We know that the brief thrill of winning the argument, proving weâre right, proving weâre stronger, smarter, or whatever, will be very fleeting and ultimately meaningless, but we do it anyway.
Many have thought that getting people to stop doing bad things was a matter of education. Sometimes education does help. Community and school campaigns that try to educate people on the dangers of drugs and addict do help. Sometimes ignorance really is the problem. But sometimes, many times, it isnât. Even people who know drugs are bad for you will use them anyway.
The story of Adam and Eve in the garden exemplifies all of this. We heard the creation account from Genesis a few weeks ago on Trinity Sunday. God created a paradise. It wasnât just a generically nice place, where the term âparadiseâ might be a matter of opinion. Some people might consider a beach in Hawaii to be paradise, but if youâre not a beach person then youâd just say it was nice but not really your cup of tea. Not so here. This was a garden specifically created for them. It was literally the perfect place for them. They had no needs that were not met. Thereâs nothing they could want that they could not have, with only one exception. Still, there was nothing about the fruit that especially commended itself to them. They didnât need it for food. They didnât really need it for anything at all. Their lives would have been no worse off if the tree had simply vanished.
Adam and Eve were never going to be more than human beings. There was never an option to go beyond that limit. There was never a need for them to do so either. They had everything they could possibly need and when confronted with the chance of maybe having something that might have some vague value, they give up absolutely everything in order to have it. Itâs quite literally the stupidest choice anyone could have ever made and they did. Now we relive that stupid choice every day.
We think of sin as evil, as destruction and hatred, as rebellion, and it is all of those things. But itâs also just pure stupidity. Itâs stupid. Itâs always stupid, and yet we keep doing it. That says something about who we are and itâs a message we really, really donât like to hear.
Iâm a stupid person who makes stupid choices and those stupid choices will end up hurting me, hurting those around me. One day, one of those stupid choices will end up being the death of me and I know all of that and I keep doing it anyway.
Those who claim we have free will, that weâre capable of choosing God and salvation, that weâre capable of choosing to do good and righteous things rarely want to discuss why they so often choose to do the stupid, sinful things too. As Christians who understand the damage that sin does, not just in this world, but especially in eternity, we should know better than most that sin is destructive. We do know, but that doesnât slow us down as often as it should.
St. Paulâs discussion here comes in the midst of a longer discussion of sin, righteousness, and Godâs law. Godâs law highlights how we are all guilty of terminal stupidity. It points out how completely broken, useless, and destructive we are. Godâs law says we should be thrown away like so much trash. We are all wretched and terrible and we are completely incapable of doing anything to change that. The evidence is all around us. One only has to look at how many sinful things we just keep on doing. Wretched man that I am indeed.
The Pentecost season continues on and we take a deeper look at the work of Christ and what that means for us and for the world today. Here we see another side of the salvation Christ won for us, itâs a side that we donât consider as much as we should. Christ comes to save us from sin, death, and Satan and we usually operate as if those things are all on the outside, like Satan is some mugger in an alleyway jumping out to assault innocent bystanders. Jesus becomes the dutiful policeman who rounds him up and keeps the world safe from Satanâs nonsense. Here St. Paul points out that the injuries we receive arenât really done to us by others, theyâre things we do to ourselves. Jesus doesnât come to save us from the world so much as he saves us from ourselves.
Jesus faces the same temptation early in his ministry. He isnât marred by sin. He isnât twisted in such a way that he picks the bad choice by default, like we do. He is given the same choice and he refuses Satanâs offer.
Where we are utterly incapable of choosing to do the right thing, no matter how obviously stupid the bad choice is, the end result is that we make the right choice. Not because we made the right choice ourselves, but because God chooses for us. God chooses salvation for us, where we would choose condemnation and destruction. We are saved by his choosing, because God chooses to extend Christâs perfection to us. We are saved because Jesus does something that, by any earthly standards, is completely stupid. He, a perfect and innocent man, allows himself to be put to death in the most gruesome and inhumane way imaginable and he does so without putting a fuss of any kind. He suffers the result of our stupidity so we donât have to.
It is here that we get a new sense of exactly what our salvation costs. We have even more reasons to give thanks for what Jesus was willing to do on our behalf. He sees everything you do. He sees how you do things even when you know what kind of damage they will cause. He sees how, even though you do all of these stupid things, your pride causes you to still think youâre a good person. He sees how youâll end up dying for it. He makes a different choice. He takes all of that on himself. He takes all of those consequences. He makes that choice because he knows you canât and he makes it so that one day youâll never have to make the choice again.
The Pentecost season reminds us of Christâs work both in eternity and in the world today. Here St. Paulâs words serve as a reminder and a warning. Sin can never be justified. It can never be explained away. There is never a time when we can excuse sin. It is always bad. It is always stupid. His words are a reminder of exactly what kind of people we really are and then how wonderful it is to have a God who sees what we do and chooses to love us and save us anyway.