Most of us can identify with Paul in Romans 7. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate” (15 ESV). “For I have the desire to do what is right, but I do not do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing” (19-20).
If we do actually identify with Paul, the following statements are also true of us. “Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good” (16). “For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being” (22). I “hate” the sin that I am doing (15). “I have the desire to do what is right” (19).
Paul cried out in anguish, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” Then, he answered his own questioning cry, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (24-25a). Yet, even after thanking God for his deliverance, he acknowledged the struggle continues. “So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin” (25b). His next words are, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (8:1).
There are two stated qualifications to be one for whom there is no condemnation: be “in Christ Jesus” (8:1) and “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (8:4). Faithful Christians have a particular mind set. Paul said to the Colossian Christians that you were “buried with him in baptism, in which you were also raised with him through faith in the powerful working of God, who raised him from the dead. …If then you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth” (Colossians 2:12; 3:1-2).
One biblical way to describe a “faithful Christian life” is a mind set on things above. Another is, “walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit (Romans 8:5).
Paul’s struggle with sin did not end when he became a Christian. What ended was condemnation because of his sins. A child of God can so sin as to fall from the grace of God into eternal condemnation (Galatians 5:4), but the faithful do not fall from grace whenever they sin. God does not count their sins against them (Romans 4:8). Their sins are cleansed by the blood of Christ (1 John 1:7). They are not condemned (Romans 8:1).
Christians, whose whole life is aimed at Heaven, who struggle with sin but hate it, who truly will to do and want to do as God directs “by God’s power are being guarded through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time” (1 Peter 1:5). Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!
