Tuesday
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. . . .
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 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 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 7:14-15, 18-25, NIV)
Today’s verses focus on the internal struggle within the Apostle Paul that he so honestly confesses in the seventh chapter of Romans. Even though Paul knows what is right, he offers us a profound insight about the powerful grip of sin over his life. The statement “I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin” leaves little doubt about the depth of Paul’s conviction on this subject.
Despite what God intends for us as captured in the multifaceted word shalom, sin stands in the way and generates internal warfare. We know what is right and we even desire to do it, but we continually do the opposite. We are, as Paul points out, “prisoners of the law of sin.”
That is the stark reality of the human condition. The glorious intention of the Creator God, as evident in the Garden of Eden, must be understood in light of the entry of sin into the world. God desires that we live in harmony, but sin drives us into conflict. That is the struggle underway in human history.
Christians are not different than non-Christians in terms of their basic human nature. All people are slaves to sin. Martin Luther said “saints, at the same time as they are righteous, are also sinners.” They are like “sick men under the care of a physician; they are sick in fact but healthy in hope and in the fact that they are beginning to be healthy. . . .”
Prayer
Lord, we confess we are sinners, slaves to the law of sin. Forgive us our sins by your grace and free us from the warfare that goes on inside us. Empower us by your Holy Spirit to do your will and not to follow the passions of our own sinful hearts. Amen.