Romans 7

Romans 7:18-20 (ESV)

[18] 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. [19] For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. [20] Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.

 

How often I hear these verses quoted as though they are the description of the normal Christian life. “I know what is right. I want to do what is right, but I constantly fail. Thank God I am forgiven because I can’t seem to change. Someday, when I see Jesus, then I’ll change.” But that is not the description of the normal Christian life. That mindset is acquiescing to sin before we even start. It is an attitude of expectant failure. But Paul is not describing the normal Christian life in these verses. He is describing the experience of those under law who by their own efforts are trying to live in obedience to the rules of the law.

 

We must never forget that the first part of Romans 7 and the last part of Roman 7 express victory over sin. Romans 7:5-6 say,

[5] For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death. [6] But now we are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive, so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.

“We are released from the law, having died to that which held us captive so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit.” The chapter ends with these words, “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 7:25). It is the flesh that serves the law of sin, but we are no longer in the flesh. “We serve in the new way of the Spirit.” “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Rom 7:24-25).

 

As believers we are delivered from the flesh. The normal Christian life is a life lived by the power of the indwelling Spirit rather than by the flesh trying to obey the law. The description of failure is the description of the normal life in the flesh under law. The flesh is that Old Man apart from Christ. The normal Christian life is a life lived in the power of the Spirit by faith. As believers in Jesus Christ it is time that we stop making excuses for failure and learn to rest in the power of resurrected life by the Spirit of Christ who dwells in us.