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The Desire to Do Good
For I know that good itself does not dwell in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. — Romans 7:18
If you’re a committed Christian who has battled your patterns of sin and been at times discouraged by the results, you’re not alone. Even the Apostle Paul has known that feeling of frustration with oneself. I’ve gone and done it again!
In moments of clarity and closeness with God, we experience our desire aligned with God’s. Maybe if presented with a button that would stop us from ever sinning again, we’d press it. But then life carries us away, and we do what we so certainly did not want to do. Why?
Why do Christians Still Sin?
For when we were in the realm of the flesh, the sinful passions aroused by the law were at work in us, so that we bore fruit for death. But now, by dying to what once bound us, we have been released from the law so that we serve in the new way of the Spirit, and not in the old way of the written code. — Romans 7:5-6
Jesus brought God’s people righteousness that they could not earn by trying (and inevitably failing) to follow the Law. But Paul doesn’t mean to say the Law was a bad thing, or that it was somehow a mistake or utterly failed plan A for our God. But the Law, in fact, helps us to recognize the sins we commit and to understand how deeply we need Jesus.
Following Jesus means pursuing sanctification, having turned away from our old selves who gratified the flesh. Christians now live in the Spirit! But clearly, there’s still sin in the church. We do not anyways do what the person we call our Lord and Savior would desire us to do.
Why is that? Well, we still live in a broken world, because we have the calling to bring the good news to others. We live in a place where temptation lurks around every corner, and where spiritual warfare rages on. In this battleground, sin seizes every opportunity!
For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death. Romans 7:11
Do You Continue to Sin?
Hear this today, church: The temptation to do what you are not supposed to do doesn’t make you terrible but makes you normal.
I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.
—Romans 7:15
If even Paul experienced it, then it must be very common among the rest of us, indeed. But even as we sin, if we recognize we are not becoming the man or woman of God we desire to be, we can and should come to God on our knees. He is a God of grace, and He never gets tired of our repentance.
It’s possible you would take the grace of God for granted without the ongoing battle of right versus wrong. If you need Jesus even now that you’re saved, how much more do the unbelievers in our life need Him. Don’t take that statement in pride, but in humility: we need to get ourselves out of the way of bringing God’s people into a relationship with Jesus.
Paul ends this chapter with two verses that reveal our state before and after our acceptance of Jesus as our Lord and Savior.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? — Romans 7:24
We are dirty rotten sinners, that much is true. But that’s not the end of the story. Jesus has justified us, and we are reconciled to the Father. We have been set free from sin so that we may choose to live free from sin. We are no longer slaves to sin, but give ourselves up as slaves for our good and perfect Master, Jesus Christ.
Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. — Romans 7:25
Resources:
Refine // Part 7: Pride - Humility // Chase Baker
