Romans 7:14-21

 Romans 7:14-21

No one who has ever seriously attempted to live righteously will doubt the power of sin. In this passage, one of the key questions about the struggle with sin is whether this is a Christian or non-Christian who has a struggle. Paul speaks in the present tense, which may indicate that it is a Christian’s struggle. But he uses language such as “sold into the bondage of sin” that is not descriptive of the Christian life. A detailed explanation of this question will have to wait for another time, but for the moment let us assume that both the Christian and non-Christian struggle. There is a principle that we do need to apply to ourselves: we are powerless to overcome sin by ourselves.

When a person becomes a Christian, they do not instantaneously change all the habits and patterns of life in that moment. Their status and standing before God are changed, but their habits are still theirs. Becoming a Christian will not change the behavioral habits that make up our moral character. Before Christ, sin was on the inside, working its way out to every aspect of our being. Fight as we might, we were not successful in overcoming sin. But in the moment we became a Christian, sin was removed from the inside and is now on the outside, trying to find its way back in. When sin was evicted, it left behind its habits from relationship patterns and emotions. From the outside, sin will try to use these as a way back into our lives.

The Christian who comes to this new life from a former life of hurt, abuse, hate, and dysfunction will have habits and ways of dealing with life that are sinful. The struggle they will have as a Christian is that when they face the same old hurts and pain, they will, by habit, tend to react in the old sinful ways. What they want to do, live holy, they don’t do, and what they don’t want to do, practice sin, they fall back into. Before Christ, “powerless before sin” is the only way to describe their circumstances.

But here’s the difference: before Christ, they were guilty and fighting the battle alone. As Christians, they are forgiven, and the Holy Spirit fights along side them. The new believer will struggle and will at times act rather badly, but they are capable of making real progress. They are forgiven, and they have the opportunity with God’s help to overcome the habits of sin. They can, indeed must, start living up to what they have been made. In this case, direction and progress are more important than position.

“Lord, make me full dependent on You and fiercely resistant to sin. AMEN 

Romans 7:1-13

 Romans 7:1-13

At the end of Romans 6, Paul describes the slavery to sin that can potentially wrap us up. Here he talks about how that relationship ended. This is one of Paul’s deepest thinking passages as he looks for ways to explain the relationship between sin, law, and our life in Christ. First, he uses the covenant of marriage as an example. So long as a woman is married, she cannot legitimately have another man. But if her husband dies, she is no longer bound by that marriage covenant. She is, in a word, set free because the husband she was bound to has died. The application here is twofold. First, when we are baptized, our relationship with both sin and the law dies. We were once married to them but are no longer because of the death we experience in our baptism. Second, we are now free to marry another, that is, Christ.

Before someone would try to equate law and sin as the same thing, Paul clearly defends law as being good, holy, and righteous. Law is not the problem. In a perfect universe, the law would be clearly seen as the wonderful and beautiful thing that it is. But ours is not a perfect universe. Sin has corrupted us and the way we understand the law. While the prohibitions of the law protect us, our defiant nature sees the law as something to be broken so we can gain an advantage. Perhaps this illustration will help. Playing a board game with a toddler, the rules are meaningless. But as a child learns to play the game, they learn the rules. Before long they will learn to cheat. The rules give order to the game. But the child wanting to win will see every rule as something to be broken in order to gain an advantage. The rules or law are not the problem, but we see in them where we can try to get ahead by cheating.

When we think that cheating, breaking the law, will give us an advantage, we are always deceived. First, we are deceived in how much satisfaction we will achieve. Sin makes grandiose promises but never delivers. Second, we are deceived and how good our justification for our sin is. The reason, excuse, or lie we tell ourselves as we try to legitimize our sin may seem solid to us, but from a proper perspective, it is clearly flimsy. Finally, we are deceived and how we can secretly sin. We think there will be no consequences. Not at all! We are often caught. But even if not, God knows, and our conscience knows. This will compel us to either repent or move toward greater darkness and become more evil and monstrous.

“Lord, help me to grasp Your intended purpose for the Law.  AMEN”