“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” Rom. 7:21-25
Devotional Thought For The Day
This concludes the most “psychological” contemplation of the inner life of a Christian. Every genuine Christian knows what the apostle is writing about, and as was the case with him, we too struggle to understand our own being [Rom. 7:15]. We would like the whole process to be simple, completely black and white, so that we can have peace of mind and not have to contemplate the “wretchedness” of the ongoing influence of “the law of sin that dwells in my members.” We would prefer that God would simply do away with all sinful impulses, with all of our sin of thought, word, and deed, including that which we remain blissfully unaware of [Jer. 17:9]. Instead, we find a constant need to continue on with repentance, taking comfort in the assurances of God’s gracious forgiveness and mercy, and struggling onward to put our sinful nature to death. The more intense and committed we are to this process the more excruciating it is.
So we are left with one of two solutions to escape this painful dilemma. The first is to accept the duality and to try to embrace both equally and without guilt. That is, we agree fully to serve the law of God with our mind but we also capitulate to serving the law of sin with our “flesh,” and to do so with gusto. In this way we try to become comfortable in our sin and pay no attention to it, and when bothered by our guilt or accused by others we respond by saying “I’m only human, I’m supposed to make mistakes.” In other words, we agree in our minds that it is evil, but we acquiesce to continue serving the law of sin. However, this destroys repentance and faith – the sin loses its consequence in our minds, and so we see no need for forgiveness, and no need to really strive to actually love in our behavior, and we eventually lose any sense of serving the law of God even with our minds. This is spiritual death.
The second solution is to work very hard at denying that we serve the law of sin with our flesh, that is, that we have in fact become fully and completely sanctified and perfect, that the only thing we do is “serve the law of God with my mind.” This is the dreadful condition of those who are ignorant of God’s gracious forgiveness and mercy in Christ Jesus, who are outside of Christendom, and who believe they must do enough good to commend themselves to God and earn His salvation. Sadly, many Christians get caught up in this delusion and come to believe that this is real Christianity, and that they are the real, genuine, devoted, and enthusiastic Christians, and that Christians who continue in repentance and faith are weak and despicable. However, this solution also has a deadly and dreadful effect upon Christian faith. If you think that you have become perfect then you no longer have need to repent, and without repentance you have no need for God’s gracious mercy and forgiveness in Christ Jesus, and hence have no faith in Him, but rather faith in yourself. One in this condition has also left Christendom and gone back to spiritual death, and the worst kind of spiritual death, one that is oblivious to what has happened and one that is inoculated against repentance and true faith in Christ.
There must, however, be some comfort, for Jesus seeks to give us His joy and peace, and His perfect love casts out all fear [1 Jn. 4:18]. The resolution is to rejoice constantly in the assurance that the apostle next presents: “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.” [Rom. 8:1] Above all things this joyful reality must be kept firmly in mind – it is the healing for the spiritual insanity that Paul is contemplating and reflecting upon. However, the tension must also remain, so that we not capitulate to setting our minds on the flesh. Paul acknowledges that to do so is death [Rom. 8:6]. We are to set our minds on the things of the Spirit, and that is love, all the things encouraged by the law of God, the fulfillment of which is love [Rom. 13:10]. As we do so we are constantly reminded of how our flesh can only serve the law of sin, and so we remain in constant repentance – and in the constant joy of God’s forgiveness, that there is now no condemnation for us. In this way we remain fully committed to serving the law of God, and we seek to orient all our being according to that law of love – our thoughts, emotions, ambitions, speaking, and behavior.
But the tension of the truth and the reality of our wretched duality remains – eased and comforted only by the gracious mercy, forgiveness, and love of God in Christ Jesus. After all, even our righteousnesses are as filthy rags [Is. 64:6]. But Christ’s blood cleanses us from all sin, and we shall not come into condemnation but have passed from death to life, through faith in Jesus [Jn. 5:24], and so we do not set our minds on the things of the flesh or seek to walk according to the flesh, but rather we orient and commit ourselves fully to the things of the Spirit. And neither do we try to resolve the tension and get rid of it, for no matter how we seek to accomplish this it leads to spiritual death of impenitence and unbelief. So we cleave to the joys of God’s salvation, and rejoice that deliverance from the wretched tension has been provided for us “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” God grant us such faith and joy, and preserve us from all temptations that lead to death.
Prayer For The Day
Dear Lord Jesus, You understand our dilemma perfectly and have determined that we will be saved by faith and that we must walk in faith in this earthly life. We rejoice in Your gracious forgiveness, Your full and complete pardon of all our sins. Preserve us from all perverse and deadly temptations – whether to embrace sin or to embrace hypocritical self-righteousness. Grant us Your peace and joy as we live by faith, fully aware of the contradictions in our mind and flesh, repenting and finding relief in You alone. Amen.