Tag: Sin; The Old Nature - Romans 7-8

Romans 7:21-25
So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

Tag:  Sin; The Old Nature

In Romans 6-7 Paul is teaching the Romans about the reason for the Law and the way Law "ignites" sin in our lives.   Sin is like gasoline in our lives.  When the Serpent tempted Eve to disobey the Law (don't eat the fruit), he ignited the passion of sin (the gasoline) and that caused Eve to sin.   Christ came to fulfill all the Law and then die for us, thus breaking the penalty of the Law on us.  However, Christ's death also gave us power over the "igniting of sin" in our lives by the Law.  Yet, as the above passage teaches, we are not, YET, completely free from the Law.   Hence, sin still is a battle raging in our lives as believers.   But, the deliverance from that burning sin is through the power and resurrection of Christ.   Note what one commentary states:


Paul’s primary emphasis in the present passage, however, is not on the believer’s eventual deliverance from sin’s presence but on the conflict with sin that torments every spiritually sensitive child of God. He therefore ends by summarizing the two sides of that struggle: So then, on the one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
In the poem Maud (x. 5), one of Tennyson’s characters yearns, “Ah for a new man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be!” The Christian can say that a new man has already arisen in him, but he also must confess that the sinful part his old man has not yet ceased to be. (John MacCarther)

Even though we have the indwelling Christ, until we are glorified in heaven we will carry the sinful man with us.  Our walk with God is to live in faith and give Christ full reign in our lives.  When we don't, our sin nature is waiting to be ignited to produce the burning of sin in our lives.