Romans 7:15 -“I don’t understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don’t do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate.”
The apostle explains beautifully in this scripture about how death puts a stop to everything in our earthly life including the validity of the laws. Think about this for a moment. When we die, our riches don’t have any weight, our relationships do not matter, our house/car and things will be used by someone else or will be got rid off, even our health will cease to exist. So why do we pursue these things, this kind of life? Even laws by which we are bound now cease to be valid when we die. They no longer hold good. Today we may use the loopholes in the laws to not get caught. What is all this? Is it called sin?
Ever since we died in ourselves and gave ourselves to be reborn in Christ, the same applies to us. We are not governed by the laws (of the land) but by the Word of God. The Word of God is never wrong; it is the same forever, it is valid forever, it is useful for always. Because the Word of God teaches us to respect authority, we automatically live a life within the laws. And since we are reborn in Christ, we have a constant thirst for Christ. Like a parched throat that is satisfied with trickles of water but thirsts for streams and then some more, our soul longs for any Word of God, any information of Jesus or a whisper from the Holy Spirit. Our parched spiritual self longs for the continuous trickle or pour of God in our lives to renew, restrengthen and restore us for our purpose. Even though we crave this, many a time we find ourselves straying to sin. Yes. We don’t like sin. But our flesh takes decisions and pulls us sinward; for example, we forget to love others as Christ loved us. We maybe frequently led into tempers, words, or actions, which we do not approve or allow in our renewed judgment and affections. Therefore, we can say that we do this sin against any reason and our conscience. We do the very things we hate. We are far away from righteousness. We are so far beneath the apostle in holiness, knowledge of the spirituality of God’s law, and the evil of our own hearts, and hatred of moral evil. We have deep feelings of abhorrence of sin and self-abasement. There is a conflict between the remaining sin we carry and our thirst for God.
The only thing that can save us is Jesus. Only through Jesus we can be righteous. We only need to go back to Jesus again and again. We need to renew, restore and restrengthen ourselves in Jesus. Look to Jesus not the world. Look to Jesus not your sins. Look to Jesus.
