You can see a spider better on a white shirt

Ken Balding gives interesting insight into Romans 7 shared with him by JI Packer.

Here is my story.  J. I. Packer was lecturing for three days at the college where I was an undergraduate studying theology and biblical languages.  When it was announced that students could sign up for personal meetings with Dr. Packer, I think I was the only student in the college who signed up.  When I sat down with this distinguished British theologian, he asked, “How can I help you, young man?”

I blurted out:  “Romans 7!  I don’t understand Romans 7!  What’s going on in that passage?”

Packer then gently helped me uncover my own presuppositions about the passage and then offered to me a key insight that has helped me to this day.  I offer this insight to you in turn since I believe that this resolves the most important reason people reject the autobiographical reading of Romans 7.  How can the regenerate Paul—man of God that he is, and author of Romans 6 and 8—be experiencing such a struggle with sin as we see in Romans 7?

Packer gently leaned over the table, looked me in the eye, and said, “Young man, Paul wasn’t struggling with sin because he was such a sinner.  Paul was struggling because he was such a saint.  Sin makes you numb.  People who sin over and over again become desensitized to sin.  The reason Paul’s “struggle” was so intense was not because he was caught in a web of sin, or because he thought of himself as hopelessly doomed to giving into the temptations that he faced.  Rather, it was because Paul lived a life so sensitive to the Holy Spirit and passionate about the glory of God that he intensely felt his sins whenever he became aware that he had committed a sin (since he was not, of course, sinlessly perfect).”[2]

In other words, you can see a black spider crawling up your shirt a lot better if you are wearing a white shirt than if you are wearing a black shirt.  (Pause and think about that one for a moment if you didn’t get it right away.)

I want you to notice two things.  First, what was going on at that college that only one student took advantage of a personal meeting with JI Packer?!?  Second, we struggle with sin not because we are sinners, but because we are being changed by the Holy Spirit.  

Read it all here.