Good Morning Friends,
“I know that nothing good lives in me, that
is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot
carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not
want to do -- this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is
no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. So I find this
law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my
inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the
members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a
prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am!
Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God -- through Jesus Christ
our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the
sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.” (Romans 7:18-25)
Paul acknowledges the truth of what Jesus
said, “The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (Matthew 26:41) It’s a
truth that all of us have experienced and have to acknowledge, if we are
honest.
Paul wanted to do what was good, but he found
that he could not carry out that desire. Something kept him from being able to
do the good he wanted to do. Paul wanted to keep from doing evil, but though
the desire was there, he still found himself giving in to the evil he did not want
to do. Try as hard as he could, there was nothing he could do to change. And so
he had to conclude, “What a wretched man that I am!”
There are many in the world who don’t want to
admit that they, too, are wretched. There is an old hymn that talks about Jesus
dying for “such a worm as I.” There are people who don’t like to sing that
phrase. In fact, there are people who simply won’t sing that phrase. They
aren’t willing to view themselves as a “worm.” But Paul didn’t have a problem
with that. He knew the depth of his own problem with sin and his own
helplessness to overcome it.
Where could he turn? Only one place -- to
Jesus Christ. Wretched though he was, Jesus rescued him. And so he could
proclaim, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ
Jesus.” (Romans 8:1)
Praise God! Give Him thanks. What we could
not do for ourselves, He did for us.
His, by Grace,
Steve
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