Rom 7
“The trouble is with me, for I am all too human, a slave to sin. I don’t really understand myself, for I want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do what I hate. I love God’s law with all my heart. But there is another power within me that is at war with my mind. This power makes me a slave to the sin that is still within me. Oh what a miserable person I am! Who will free me from this life that is dominated by sin and death? Thank God! The answer is in Jesus Christ our Lord. So you see how it is: In my mind I really want to obey God’s law, but because of my sinful nature I am a slave to sin.”
This is one of my favorite chapters of the Bible. As I have gotten older, and my relationship with God has also grown in years, find myself more and more frustrated with the sin in my life. I truly cannot understand how I can know so positively what is best for me, and still choose something other than the best when it comes time for action. How can I know with everything in me that starting my day spending time with God is the absolute best way to begin, yet I wake up and sometimes pick up my phone, or get started on my to do list? How can I know that the best way to nurture a relationship is to love sacrificially, yet I choose to carry on with my own agenda and not make time for or share myself with those I want to love better? How can I be so appreciative and enamored by Jesus selfless gift to me, yet look out for myself instead of selflessly loving like He does? I cannot express the comfort of knowing that one of the superheroes of the Bible writes about my exact frustration with not doing what I want to do, and doing what I don’t want to do. I’m not happy that someone else was failing as miserably as I am, it is just comforting to know that the struggle is real no matter what your level of faith is.
I wish I understood the theology behind these verses in Romans. I don’t understand it enough to settle the truth in my own mind let alone articulate that truth here to anyone else, but I am simple enough to look at verse 24 and know that I am the way I am whether I understand myself fully or not. I can also see from verse 25 that God knows how I am and why I am this way. I think part of the explanation may be as simple as the fact that I am human. I was born with a sin nature and as long as I am on this earth I will have that sin nature as part of my makeup. God knows that I am a slave to sin and has provided a way out of my life dominated by death and sin. Jesus buying me back out of my death sentence with His perfect life is the only hope and help I have. I’m with Paul in vs 25…Thank God!!!
I’m thinking back to Holly’s post on Sat morning and the Frances Chan clip she included in her post. Frances illustrated so beautifully what a small portion of our lives are spent here on earth. The frustration with the sin in our lives is short lived compared with the perfection and eternity of heaven. We are limited in our understanding of “life” because we use our experience here on earth as our measure. God’s timeline and experience is so different because He knows so much more than we do. God also speaks through Paul in chapter 8 of Romans to explain more to us about the new mind He gives us after we accept His gift of salvation. He gifts us part of Him, the Holy Spirit, to help us. Rom 8:9 says that, “We are not controlled by our sinful natures. We are controlled by the Spirit.” I have to stay in tight relationship to God to hear and sense the Spirit’s nudges. When I start to think I can manage my own life, I move God from His rightful spot in my heart, and I move the Spirit’s voice far enough away from me that I can’t hear it. I can’t steal any more of Chet’s writing material for tomorrow from Rom 8, but the relationship between the sin nature and the Spirit’s control are covered beautifully in Chapter 8, and I couldn’t end today in the frustration of our sin nature without some help and hope from Chapter 8. I’m sorry Chet!