Why Can’t I Be Good? - Sermon for Pentectost 6A/Proper 9
Have you ever done something you know is wrong but can’t figure out why you do it? I’m not thinking here of exceeding the speed limit, which almost everyone does. But if you struggle with doing the right thing, Paul understands your predicament. Even St. Paul found himself doing things he knew were wrong. While the Law, which is spiritual, can let us know what is right and what is wrong, it can’t help us overcome our tendency to do the things we know are wrong. So what should we do?
Now, the fact that we know the difference between right and wrong means that the law is good. Although Paul points out that the Law doesn’t have the power to help us fulfill its requirements, I think he would agree at least in part with this word from Psalm 19:
The law of the Lord is perfect,
reviving the soul;
the decrees of the Lord are sure,
making wise the simple;
8 the precepts of the Lord are right,
rejoicing the heart;
the commandment of the Lord is clear,
enlightening the eyes;
9 the fear of the Lord is pure,
enduring forever;
the ordinances of the Lord are true
and righteous altogether.
10 More to be desired are they than gold, even much fine gold;
sweeter also than honey,
and drippings of the honeycomb.
I think Paul would agree with the Psalmist that the Law is perfect, though I’m not sure he would agree that it revives the soul. Nevertheless, it is helpful to know what God expects of us, even if we struggle with the implementation!
Here in Romans 7, Paul discusses the problem of sin, which appears to be like a virus that runs through our systems, drawing us away from God. St. Augustine had something to say about this problem in his famed spiritual memoir that is simply titled Confessions. In this book, Augustine tells how he once joined a group of young men who, when they came upon a pear tree, decided to pick a bunch of the pears from the tree, not because they were hungry, but simply because it was there. He writes: “Perhaps we ate some, but our real pleasure consisted in doing something that was forbidden” [Confessions, 2:4, p. 47]. Although Augustine knew the difference between right and wrong, he and his friends derived pleasure from doing something forbidden. There is something enticing about doing something that is forbidden, especially when you’re young. So, Augustine understood what Paul meant when he confessed: “Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7:24). So did John Newton, the author of the hymn “Amazing Grace.” Before he became an Anglican priest, Newton had been the captain of a slave ship. So, when he looked back at his old life, he joined Paul in declaring of God’s grace, that it “saved a wretch like me.” While I sometimes struggle with this wording, it’s worth remembering that Newton wrote this hymn in the context of his own life story. Newton understood what it meant to sin, and he took solace in Paul’s message that God’s grace allowed him to chart a new course in life.
We hear this word from Paul’s letter to the Romans a day after the United States celebrated the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding. It was on July 4, 1776, that leaders from the thirteen original colonies signed the Declaration of Independence. This document, which was written largely by Thomas Jefferson, declared:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
While these are powerful words, the Founders and their national descendants have struggled to embody them. I think Jefferson and his colleagues knew that, like the Torah, this document was more aspirational than descriptive. That’s because they didn’t believe that everyone living in this new nation was considered to be created equal. It certainly didn’t include Native Americans, who were specifically excluded. It didn’t include slaves, most of whom were Black. I’m not sure it even included women, who didn’t receive the right to vote until 1920. Even if Thomas Jefferson believed that everyone was created equal, he and the others failed to live into this American Creed. We continue to struggle to embody those principles.
Like the church of Jesus Christ in its long and winding history, the American nation also has a rather complicated history. It took a bloody Civil War to end slavery in the United States. It would take several amendments to not only end slavery but extend the rights of citizenship to people who had been enslaved. Still, many obstacles stood in the way of their ability to achieve full equality. It took the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s to end Jim Crow and remove legal and cultural impediments to full citizenship. Of course, it took the Nineteenth Amendment of 1920 to guarantee women the right to vote. Even now some of these rights are being rolled back.
So, I think the Founders, who embraced the Enlightenment view of human perfectability, had a blind spot that Paul had pointed out centuries earlier. They seemed to miss the presence of that virus, which Paul calls sin and often influences our ability to do the right thing. While I want to believe that I’m incapable of engaging in the kinds of horrific activities attributed to Hitler, Stalin, and Mao, is this really true? Otherwise good people can get caught up in activities that are destructive and demeaning. It’s not that they are born that way, but the virus we call sin can take hold of our lives, causing us to do things we know to be wrong.
Paul speaks of this reality as if it’s a war going on inside us and society as a whole. Ron Allen and Clark Williamson write in their lectionary commentary that sin is “a power in which individuals, groups, and nations can become ensnared, like fish caught in a net” (Preaching the Letters, p. 73). I believe we often get caught in this net, which is why we often fall short of living into the ways of God.
We can know what is right. We can delight in the Law of the Lord or the American Creed as laid out in the Declaration of Independence, and still fall short in our ability to embody its principles. Maybe it’s peer pressure that causes us to fall short. Like Augustine, we may find ourselves going along with the crowd and do stupid things, or even worse, just because we can.
Back in the day I trained as a church historian, and one thing you discover from studying history is that what you find is often disheartening. It is full of stories of human failure to do the right thing. People commit horrible acts of violence, sometimes in the name of God. They may even think they’re doing something noble, but if they pay attention to the teachings of Jesus, they may discover that they were wrong.
Although Paul confesses that he is a “wretched person,” which is a rather disheartening confession coming from someone who helped form what became the Christian faith, there is a glimmer of hope in this reading. Paul concludes our reading from Romans 7 with the words: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” Why might Paul give thanks to God after confessing his failures to do the right thing? I believe Paul is thankful that because of God’s grace received through the mediation of Jesus, our lives can change for the better. As the Psalmist reminds us this morning in our reading from the 145th Psalm:
8 The Lord is gracious and merciful,
slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.
9 The Lord is good to all,
and his compassion is over all that he has made. (Psalm 145:8-9)
God is gracious, merciful, compassionate, and is good to all. That is our hope. While grace doesn’t excuse our bad acts, it does offer the possibility of a new beginning that can lead to transformation. This is why Paul speaks of baptism serving as a moment in which we die to sin as we are buried in the baptismal waters, so that we might be raised with Christ to new life (Rom. 6:1-11). Later in this letter, Paul speaks of the change that God makes in our lives as we walk with Jesus. He writes in the 12th chapter: “Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Rom. 12:2).
It is a good thing to diagnose this virus known as sin, which often takes hold of us, so that by joining with Christ, we can be transformed for service to God’s realm. But the message Paul delivers here in Romans 7 is that when it comes to doing the right thing, we can’t save ourselves or the world by ourselves. We will need spiritual resources, starting with God’s grace, so we can get on the right track in life. For, as they say in Twelve-Step programs, change begins when we admit we have a problem we can’t solve on our own.
Preached by:
Dr. Robert D. Cornwall
Pulpit Supply
Tyrone Community Presbyterian Church (PCUSA)
Tyrone, MI
July 5, 2026
Pentecost 6A
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