22For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: 23But I see another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the law of sin which is in my members. 24O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? 25I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.
If the Apostle Paul, a man wholly dedicated to God warred with in himself over sin how much more so shall we?
This is something that has been bothering me. As Paul stated earlier in the chapter that which he would do, he didn't. That which he didn't want to do he did.
How often are there similar times for you, for me? How often is your conscience screaming at you not to do it, don't do it! And you are so geared up to not do it.....and then you do it anyway?
Besetting sin, habitual sin, we are guarded against, we are conditioned to watch out for, we are most on the look out for and then you fall right into it anyway.
When will this battle be over, when wiill I finally win?
We won't till we get to heaven in a perfected state.
So often self- recrimination kicks in, verbal self-flagellation over simple stuff that should not be a problem for a christian man like me.
The mind truly is willing to lead a perfect sinless life, yet we can not in this human body. In this vessel of clay we are hopelessly struggling in vain to get "more spiritual".
Yet that "spirituality" is already ours, we have already attained it all when we received Christ. Just as when you were physically born you had all you were ever going to, then you had to grow and learn. You had to do everything in stages: baby, toddler, youth, teen and into adulthood.
We have achieved all the spirituality we are going to at our birth in Christ. After we receive Him then we can get to the business of learning and applying that "spirituality" to our daily lives. For it is not through anything we have done but solely through Christ and His Status that we have anything.
Salvation - through Christ alone.
Righteousness - only His matters we have none.
Eternal life - through His sacrifice.
Answered prayers - only through Christ can we ask of the Father.
We are nothing without Him. Without Him we would dally our days away in sin, ignorant of the cost, the degradation it is putting us through.
It is only through Him we can say " i am God's Son" when He sees me He sees a child washed in the blood, perfect.
Even though we will continue to fight sin, we will continue to sin, we will stay in our imperfect state as long as we have these bodies on this earth.
That is why 1 John 1:9 is so important,
9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God knows we are human, fallible, and prone to err. No matter how hard we strive, how much we want to live sinlessly perfect we will not. We can only do the best we can, pray, confess and try to stem the tide as long as we can.
I have said before and will say again - we do not want to linger in sin. That is where death is.
But we will continue to do that which we do not want to.
We will continue to fight mind against body.
Spiritual man against physical man until the day we are translated to our eternal home with Christ.
If you or a brother are in sin, don't judge, offer them a hand up. A hope. Don't condone, but by the same token don't kick a man when he is down. Because most likely he is tearing himself apart on the inside harder than you ever will.
Besetting sin... It will be a problem for us until we are no longer on this earth.
How lucky are we that we have an infinitely merciful, gracious, and forgiving God.
Fight the war, even though you will lose a few battles.
Never give up, never surrender.
If you take a step backwards and fall, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and continue on your journey.
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