Begin with two minutes of silence and stillness with God.
You are in the middle of a normal conversation, and then you say that thing. Immediately, you think to yourself, "Why did I just say that?" Inside, you are slapping your forehead, and on the outside, you are just trying to get through the moment. We have all been there, and if you haven't, you will. We do what we do not want to do. Paul in Romans 7 takes us inside this strange dichotomy. We have a desire to follow the law and be holy, but still, we follow our flesh and choose sin even though that’s not what we really want. We trade the life and truth God has for us with a lie and sin that promises to be just as good as God, but will never come close.
This struggle between holiness and sin exists because we live in a fallen world. A world that God created perfectly and with everything in it at peace, but sin entered, and it was no longer perfect or at peace. Since that moment, sin and death have gone hand in hand. We are dead in our sins before beginning a relationship with Jesus, but even after following and submitting to Jesus, we are human and are still going to sin. We are still going to choose our own way instead of God’s. We are still going to do what we do not want to do.
Paul makes mention of the law a few times in this chapter. God is perfect and holy. He is set apart from everything else that exists. It would only make sense that His law would be the same. The law is not there to shame us but to call out sin and call us to live holy lives. God has a desire for His children to run to Him and to follow Him, yet our desire for everything besides Him doesn’t bring us closer to a Holy God; it separates us from Him.
Paul, in this chapter, focuses on how we as humans miss the standard of being perfect or without sin, but at the very end, he provides hope. Paul says who will deliver me from this body of death. Now God is too big and too powerful and too loving to ever be stopped. A father is never going to watch their child struggle or be in harm's way and do nothing. No, they are going to find a way to get to them and bring them back to safety. If this is true of us, just imagine what our Heavenly Father will do. He made a way for Him to be with us even though we reek of sin and death. He sent Jesus as a payment for our sins so that we could be with Him forever. Paul ends this chapter by thanking God for Jesus and declaring he will serve the law of God with his mind, and still acknowledging that his flesh will fail and will serve sin.
Take two minutes to reflect in silence.