Who Will Deliver Me?

O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? I thank God – through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.  

Romans 7:24-25 

Paul understood himself well enough to know his spiritual victory would never come from him. Beginning in the seventh verse of this chapter, he clearly articulated his spiritual challenges. He admits, ‘For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am carnal, sold under sin. For what I am doing, I do not understand. For what I will to do, that I do not practice; but what I hate, that I do.’ It is important for us as believers to know this about Paul. If he only exposed us to the mountaintops of chapter 6 and 8, without showing us the valley of chapter 7, we would think our own experience was an indication of our failure of grace. Paul shows us his own spiritual experience which allows us to see that he struggled in things spiritual much in the same way we do. He needed deliverance from himself and his natural inclinations. He cries out, ‘O wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?’ This tells us he realized he would not become a more spiritual man by self-improvement. It would take more than a program of self-discipline and behavior modification to make him like Christ. It would take the intervention of Christ Himself.  

Our Glorious, Living God, 
we rejoice that we are not the agents of our own deliverance. 
We praise You that in our hardest moments, 
we can look to Christ. 

Tomm Tice
Where the Bush is Burning