The Romance of Romans-Part 37

Romans Chapter 7 cont'd

Now don't get me wrong. God's commandants are right, fair and good. So are God and his moral laws to blame for my spiritual death? No! Never! Again, the problem is the sin hiding within us. God wanted to expose its presence, power and pervasiveness and allowed it to even use his holy commandments to reinforce to us how evil it is. God’s moral law itself is spiritual, but the problem is in us- left to ourselves, we are sinful and our hearts are in a terrible bondage.
Allow me to narrate the frustrating experience of trying to live up to God's moral standard by our own strength and will power without the energy of the Holy Spirit flowing through us.
"What I do, I hate. What I want to do, I don't. What I hate, I do. By wanting to do right, even though I don't, it proves that I value the rightness of God's standards. This reveals that there is something within me blocking me from being who I really am- it's sin. I realize that my inner longings are somehow short-circuited because the performance of the good that I would like to do eludes me. For the good that I want to do, I don't do. But I actually do the evil that I don't want to do. So I conclude that the deepest part of my being is not controlling me, but a foreign power called sin has invaded my life. I have discovered a principle of human nature: when I set out to do good, an evil within me sabotages my efforts. A deeper part of me would love to obey God's moral law, but another "parasitic" force uses my bodily members as its "host" and controls me. A civil war rages between my moral values and the sinful passions that operate through my body. And sin is winning the war! I am truly a miserable person! Who can liberate me from this living death? Thanks be to God, Jesus Christ will!"
So friends, this is the awful dilemma of anyone who tries to serve God apart from the Holy Spirit's presence and power living in him and flowing through him- his mind agrees with God's moral law, but another part of him is in bondage to sin and he is unable to live up to its standard.

Comments:
I don't believe that Paul is here illustrating "the normal Christian life". Rather, I think it is a reference to "everyman"...though, certainly, he must have experienced this frustrating dynamic along the way in his spiritual journey. It is unquestionably a description of a person who has been somehow awakened spiritually to the degree that she/he believes in God and has a sincere desire within to please him. And...this is a good and noble thing. Many would say that this stage of spiritual life seems to be a necessary phase that we go through on the way to true spiritual maturity that marks and brands us with a deep personal conviction that efforts in our own strength (flesh) to please God are not sufficient and ultimately self-defeating. Jesus and the apostles did teach the truth of this latter clause in many places. In their writings, both Kirkegaard and Nouwen both articulate something akin to this. I do believe they were onto something and I will expand on this in the next installment.