Romans Chapter 7 cont'd
21So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. 24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! NIV
The most stark and vivid "Romans 7" season in my life happened between the years of 16-18. At 16, I had experienced a supernatural conviction experience while sitting in a conservative Baptist church service in the northern suburb of Detroit where I grew up. My older brother, Mark, had become a believer through their influence and had challenged me to come to this church with him. It's a long story, but it's enough to say here, that the Holy Spirit spoke directly into my heart about my sinfulness and lost-ness.
Even though I didn't really want to believe it, I somehow knew in my heart how true it was, but I decided to run away from Jesus Christ. I thought that I would like to make myself more presentable to him after making some personal reformations. And...that is what I attempted to do for two years! Only...I failed more miserably on the moral front the harder I tried to "be good". I was what the Puritans referred to as an "enlightened sinner". My conscience was very much tenderized toward good and evil, but I was progressively losing personal power to resist temptations and to even live up to my own standards...not to mention, God's.
God used this terrible season of internal agony and "civil war" to prepare me for the amazing conversion encounter that I had with Jesus at age 18. I was so ready to surrender to him by then. I felt very much like I had been dragging "the body of death" around with me that Paul so eloquently pictures above. The historical background for the word picture that he apparently had in mind when he wrote this passage is recounted below.
"Near Tarsus, where the apostle Paul was born, a tribe of people lived who inflicted a most terrible penalty upon a murderer. They fastened the body of the victim to the killer, tying shoulder to shoulder, back to back, thigh to thigh, arm to arm and then drove the murderer from the community. So tight were the bonds that he could not free himself, and after a few days the decay in the body of death spread to the living flesh of the murderer. As he stalked the land, there was none to help him remove the body of death. He only had the frightful prospect of his own slow, gangrenous death." Barnhouse, Romans, Vol 3, Book 2, p. 241.
24What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord! Come on...Romans 8!
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