Romans 7:14-25

¹⁴ For we know that the law is spiritual–but I am unspiritual, sold into slavery to sin. ¹⁵ Because I don’t understand what I am doing. For I do not do what I want–instead, I do what I hate. ¹⁶ But if I do what I don’t want, I still agree that the law is good. ¹⁷ But now it is no longer me doing it, but sin that lives in me. ¹⁸ Because I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. Because I want to do the right thing, but I cannot do it. ¹⁹ Because I do not do the right thing I want, but I do the very wrong thing I do not want! ²⁰ Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer me doing it but sin that lives in me. ²¹ So, I discover the law that when I want to do the right thing, wrong is present with me. ²² Because I enjoy the law of God in my inner being. ²³ But I see a different law in my body parts waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that is in my body parts. ²⁴ Miserable man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? ²⁵ 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.

Who will rescue me?

Oh, Christian, please do not rush past this chapter, as if Paul is only casually referring to problems he had, but which are long past. If that is you, and you can honestly say you once had a problem with your body of death, but you are now free because you walk in the Holy Spirit – great. If you say you now live in Romans 8 – great. But not me. I often live in the struggle of Romans 7.

What consoles me is not that I have overcome evil in my personal life, but that one of the greatest Christians who ever lived also struggled as I do. His mind wanted to serve the law of God, but his body parts – his heart and brain and eyes and mouth and loins and stomach — they failed to cooperate. He felt miserable a lot.

But he asked the right question. He asked “Who will rescue me from this body of death?” His answer was not found in that law he wanted to obey. It was in the Christ he put his faith in. Without that relationship with Christ, he would never have found any victory. He could not have walked in the Holy Spirit without first putting his faith in Christ.

LORD, rescue us. We will not trust in our own attempts to do good things in your name. We depend upon you to deliver us from our own unholy desires.