March 5th, 2012
Today’s reading from Encounter with God

Good, Bad and Sinful

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Opening Prayer

Father, as I bow before You, I sense Your nourishing, encouraging, healing love. Hallelujah! I am loved and forgiven.

Read Romans 7:7-25

[7] What shall we say, then? Is the law sin? Certainly not! Indeed I would not have known what sin was except through the law. For I would not have known what coveting really was if the law had not said, “Do not covet.” [8] But sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, produced in me every kind of covetous desire. For apart from law, sin is dead. [9] Once I was alive apart from law; but when the commandment came, sin sprang to life and I died. [10] I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. [11] For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. [12] So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. [13] Did that which is good, then, become death to me? By no means! But in order that sin might be recognized as sin, it produced death in me through what was good, so that through the commandment sin might become utterly sinful. [14] We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. [15] I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. [16] And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. [17] As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. [18] I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. [19] For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do-this I keep on doing. [20] Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it. [21] So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. [22] For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; [23] but 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. [24] What a wretched man 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 in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.

Scripture taken from the Holy Bible, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. All rights reserved throughout the world. Used by permission of International Bible Society.

Meditate

“My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Cor. 12:9).

Think Further

Isn’t it strange: when you see a sign “Wet paint, do not touch,” you want to find out for yourself! So, should the sign not have been put there? Of course not: it was put there for my benefit. What it has actually done, though, is to show my tendency to disobey and so, paradoxically, make me more likely to get paint on myself.

Here Paul wrestles further with the problem of the Law. It is a good gift from God (13) and yet it appears to have brought harm. But this is only because it has highlighted our problem: though it was intended to bring life, in fact the Law has brought to our attention the reality of sin in our lives, which brings death (10). Paul talks of the experience of the power of sin in the first person (“I do what I do not wantﾅ”). Scholars have debated whether this is Paul’s pre-conversion or post-conversion experience, but it is neither: Paul is exploring humanity’s experience, just as we might construct an argument using the first person plural (“we saw on p. 13 thatﾅ”). We are subject to sin, which has a kind of power over us. The Law highlights this but cannot change it, and more is needed, as is shown in the Old Testament itself, in texts like Jeremiah 31:33. This “more” is the resurrection life we are already experiencing.

But we are not there yet. Just as we have to consider ourselves dead to sin, so we have to actually begin to live as if that were reality. At the same time we are still aware of the tendency to sin in our lives. We have been delivered from the penalty of sin; we are being delivered from its power; and one day we will be free from its presence.

Apply

Reflect on areas of your life where you have seen the power of sin being rolled back by God’s grace, and let that encourage you for the areas yet to be dealt with.

Closing prayer

Lord, I need to see afresh that because of my faith I am dead to sin and alive to Christ. May that help me live victoriously.

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