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Ever feel like no matter what you do, you fail God? Like there is something wrong with you, or you just aren't good enough to make it? Like maybe its time to throw in the towel and give up?
If you answered no, I am very concerned. Paul talks about this himself, because it is the battle of our two natures. Even after we become born again and receive a new nature, the old man is still at war within.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.
So I find this law at work: When I want to do good,
evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I
see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of
my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members.
What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be
to God—through Jesus Christ our Lord!
So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin.
Romans 7, 14-ff NIV
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