We say one thing but we do the opposite.  Ugh.  We encourage others in their walk but trip and fall in our own walk.  We stop one day a week to worship God, thanking Jesus for all He did for us. But come Monday morning we jump into the worship of our weekly agendas that demands and enslaves us of our time and thoughts.  We strive to please our bosses by working hard to produce an income that satisfies all we want out of life—namely making more money for more wants beyond our needs.  The more we make, the more we spend.  We are torn between the passions of this world and all that God wants for us.  We live a contradictive life. 

We obey the laws of the land but feel most times they are written for someone else who needs them more than us.  We fudge the speed limit and push the pedal harder to get through a yellow to red light at the intersections without thinking of anyone else that might be hurt from our actions.  Laws are written to protect us.  But sometimes we use the Law as an indicator of how to get around the law for our own benefit.  The line is drawn which serves to seduce the rebellious tendencies in us to see what we can get away with or hide.  We live a contradictive life. 

Believers live a contradictive life.  Paul is no exception.  He is not perfect, either.  Knowing this, Paul explains what is really going on in our thought life and helps us to ask the right question to avoid a life of contradiction.

Romans 7, The Message

Torn Between One Way and Another

7 ^1-3 You shouldn’t have any trouble understanding this, friends, for you know all the ins and outs of the law—how it works and how its power touches only the living. For instance, a wife is legally tied to her husband while he lives, but if he dies, she’s free. If she lives with another man while her husband is living, she’s obviously an adulteress. But if he dies, she is quite free to marry another man in good conscience, with no one’s disapproval.

^4-6 So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to “marry” a resurrection life and bear “offspring” of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we’re no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we’re free to live a new life in the freedom of God.

⁷ But I can hear you say, “If the law code was as bad as all that, it’s no better than sin itself.” That’s certainly not true. The law code had a perfectly legitimate function. Without its clear guidelines for right and wrong, moral behavior would be mostly guesswork. Apart from the succinct, surgical command, “You shall not covet,” I could have dressed covetousness up to look like a virtue and ruined my life with it.

^8-12 Don’t you remember how it was? I do, perfectly well. The law code started out as an excellent piece of work. What happened, though, was that sin found a way to pervert the command into a temptation, making a piece of “forbidden fruit” out of it. The law code, instead of being used to guide me, was used to seduce me. Without all the paraphernalia of the law code, sin looked pretty dull and lifeless, and I went along without paying much attention to it. But once sin got its hands on the law code and decked itself out in all that finery, I was fooled, and fell for it. The very command that was supposed to guide me into life was cleverly used to trip me up, throwing me headlong. So sin was plenty alive, and I was stone dead. But the law code itself is God’s good and common sense, each command sane and holy counsel.

¹³ I can already hear your next question: “Does that mean I can’t even trust what is good [that is, the law]? Is good just as dangerous as evil?” No again! Sin simply did what sin is so famous for doing: using the good as a cover to tempt me to do what would finally destroy me. By hiding within God’s good commandment, sin did far more mischief than it could ever have accomplished on its own.

^14-16 I can anticipate the response that is coming: “I know that all God’s commands are spiritual, but I’m not. Isn’t this also your experience?” Yes. I’m full of myself—after all, I’ve spent a long time in sin’s prison. What I don’t understand about myself is that I decide one way, but then I act another, doing things I absolutely despise. So if I can’t be trusted to figure out what is best for myself and then do it, it becomes obvious that God’s command is necessary.

^17-20 But I need something more! For if I know the law but still can’t keep it, and if the power of sin within me keeps sabotaging my best intentions, I obviously need help! I realize that I don’t have what it takes. I can will it, but I can’t do it. I decide to do good, but I don’t really do it; I decide not to do bad, but then I do it anyway. My decisions, such as they are, don’t result in actions. Something has gone wrong deep within me and gets the better of me every time.

^21-23 It happens so regularly that it’s predictable. The moment I decide to do good, sin is there to trip me up. I truly delight in God’s commands, but it’s pretty obvious that not all of me joins in that delight. Parts of me covertly rebel, and just when I least expect it, they take charge.

²⁴ I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?

²⁵ The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.

WHAT DO WE LEARN—HOW DO WE RESPOND?

Long ago a comedian made these words famous; “The devil made me do it!”  Evil does not force us to do anything we didn’t think already think of doing.  Evil does not have that kind of power over people, but he and his demons do have power to seduce us.  He works overtime to distract, deceive with attempts to destroy our faith in God and His will for us.  He guides us to fulfill what we think we want using all kinds of ways to get it—even if it involves cheating, lying, exaggerating our importance or inflating our influence on others who have what we want.  When we are ME centered we are prey for the devil’s fun.

“I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question?” admits Paul.  This is the perfect description of living a contradictive life that frustrates us who believe and desire to please God. 

Paul answers the question and provides the answer for our contradictive dilemma:

“The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different.”

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL!

Paul further explains in our next passage that we will study tomorrow, but I can’t wait, can you?  So, here is the beginning of chapter 8;

“With the arrival of Jesus, the Messiah, that fateful dilemma is resolved. Those who enter into Christ’s being-here-for-us no longer have to live under a continuous, low-lying black cloud. A new power is in operation. The Spirit of life in Christ, like a strong wind, has magnificently cleared the air, freeing you from a fated lifetime of brutal tyranny at the hands of sin and death.

God went for the jugular when he sent his own Son. He didn’t deal with the problem as something remote and unimportant. In his Son, Jesus, he personally took on the human condition, entered the disordered mess of struggling humanity in order to set it right once and for all. The law code, weakened as it always was by fractured human nature, could never have done that.  Romans 8:1-4, MSG

The struggle is real.  But we are not alone!

When we are tempted, we must immediately cry out for help in the Name of Jesus.  God’s enemy hates believers on their knees, crying out in the Name of Jesus because he knows Jesus has already won this war!  The enemy flees the area when we take a humbled position before God in Jesus Name asking for help!  We are promised this help and Jesus, our Advocate, gives us all we need!  “Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.” James 4:7 The struggle is real; but the promise is undeniably real!

Paul taught the Romans that the law could never guarantee eternal life. He proved again that only Jesus Christ could save us.  The Bible teaches us how sinful we have become, but Jesus Christ and his Holy Spirit provide the power to overcome sin.  This power is available to all who believe and call on the Name of Jesus. 

What is the first thing we do when we enter a dark room?  Flip the switch to turn on the lights, right?  When the enemy leads us to darkness; flip the switch and turn on the power of Jesus that is within us so the Light of Jesus can show us the way out.

Lord,

We face temptations daily that distract us from your best life for us.  Give us wisdom to void contradictive living.  May we offer our lives to you as an offering.  We know that you will indeed guide us to your perfect will on any given day.  Show us your agenda for our lives even today.  May our yes be yes and our no be no.  Thank you for the power you give us to run from the battle with the enemy you have already won while resisting the temptations that seduce our souls.

In Jesus Name, Amen