ROMANS 7:14-25 – For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 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.”
THEME OF THE DAY: HE KNOWS THE WAY WE TAKE. Today’s scripture is one of those “amen” portions of scripture. It is the experience, the painful experience, of every true Christian. Read it again. What the Apostle Paul states is the reality in the Christian life that we go through periods of confusion, lack of understanding, and not just about God and His will, but of ourselves! Is this not true what he wrote, “For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.” Every believer will sigh under this heavy weight.
J.C. Philpot, an early 19th century English Baptist preacher, wrote, “Are you not often a mystery to yourself? Warm one moment, cold the next! Abasing yourself one hour, exalting yourself the following. Loving the world, full of it, steeped up to your head in it today; crying, groaning, and sighing for a sweet manifestation of the love of God tomorrow. What a mystery are you! Touched by love, then stung by hatred. Possessing a little wisdom, and a great deal of folly. Earthly-minded, and yet having the affections in heaven! Pressing forward, and lagging behind. And thus the deeper we sink in self-abasement under a sense of our vileness, the higher we rise in a knowledge of Christ, and the blacker we are in our view, the more lovely does Jesus appear.” What we just read from Philpot was his exposition of Romans 7 showing we truly are an enigma to ourselves at times.
As we lament, like the Apostle Paul, over this seeming contradiction in the Christian life, rest in this truth – God knows us far better than we know ourselves, and He loves us despite living life in Romans 7. So, as we experience the lows of contradiction to ourselves, let’s rejoice in the God who never changes and has set His heart upon us now and forever.
PRAYER: “Father, I praise You that You know the way I walk through this troublesome life.”
QUOTE: “We may not understand a lot about ourselves and life, but the Lord does and loves us still.”
In the affection of Christ Jesus,
Pastor Jim