Halfway through Romans 7, Paul has been exploring the bizarre relationship between sin and religious law. As good as the law (Torah, as the Jewish Romans would have called it) is, pointing us toward patterns of living that are good, just, and holy, law is also a catalyst for sin. We can love law too much, making observable righteousness an ultimate good that it was never supposed to be. Plus, giving a prohibition can inflame the desire to violate that prohibition all the more. So Paul finishes chapter 7 by dwelling in what a miserable situation this puts us in. “I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do the thing I want, but I do the very thing I hate.” (7:15) And “it is no longer I who do it but sin that dwells within me.” (7:17) And “I see in myself another law at war with the law of my mind.” (7:23) What a miserable situation, indeed.
The “I” here is not exactly Paul himself, not simply a first-person testimony of the struggle with sin and Torah obedience. After all, it’s over in Philippians that he explains he was always blameless in his Torah obedience (Philippians 3:4-6). Paul speaks in the first person so that we all, especially those entrenched in religious law and tradition, would be invited to make these admissions for ourselves. We know all too well the human experience of identifying that which is good, just, and holy, and yet going in the opposite direction. We want to be good, just, and holy. We despise the grip that sin has on us and earnestly desire change, yet sin persists and persists. At war with my own mind, Paul says. Couldn’t have said it better ourselves.
Paul’s account of this war ends with a bewildered throwing up of the hands. “Wretched person that I am. Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (7:24) Whatever the solution is, it will not originate within the “wretched” human heart. It will originate elsewhere. It will invade from beyond. And what’s left for the human heart is only to surrender to the invasive grace of God. So Paul concludes with a bit of doxology: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
The goodness of God is winning us over. It is too good to resist. It is overwhelming us and changing us from the inside out. It’s hard to believe that, isn’t it? We’re used to thinking the worst about ourselves. As sin exercises its will in our lives, we struggle to see the good having any chance against it. But that’s only because we instinctually look within ourselves for transformation, but that’s not where it comes from. Paul pleads for rescue because rescue is something that inherently comes from outside our own abilities. Self-rescue is not an option. It is God who has rescued us from sin, and from ourselves. What’s left to do but quit our addiction to observable righteousness and surrender to invasive grace?
Let this be a moment, a second, a breath in which we surrender to the grace that invades us from somewhere other than our own broken hearts. In this moment, this second, this breath, there is nothing we have to do, nowhere else we have to be. There are no expectations being placed on us in this moment. There is nothing to succeed or fail at. There is just the grace-filled good news that God, through Jesus Christ our Lord, has rescued us from sin, from ourselves. Surrender to that grace.
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