Huh?

"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." Huh? If you're like me, as you read this verse in Romans 7 that was penned by the apostle Paul, you're left scratching your head. Its one of those that you have to read a couple times in order to take it all in. As you do, you kind of get the idea that it is much like a mirror of our lives today as Believers. Here is Paul, sharing his frustration of trying to live life the way its suppose to be lived and always coming up short. To be honest it kind of sounds like a biography of my life.

If we aren't careful, as we read this struggle that Paul describes, we'll adopt this as the normal life that we are going to live as believers. After all, we figure that if the apostle Paul faced this, who are we to think that we are immune to this kind of lifestyle. The problem with that line of thinking is that it assumes that Paul's description in Chapter 7 is a description of something he struggled with for the entirety of his new life in Christ. That is a monumental mistake. For as Paul continues to write in Chapter 8, we find that Paul discovered the way to live a victorious life and to once and for all put this struggle to rest.

This struggle he describes is the result of attempting to live life in the "flesh." It comes about only when we determine to do life on our own apart from God. Yes, even as believers we fall into that trap. This fleshly living, or "carnal" life, is no different than that moment in the beginning when Adam and Eve chose to act independent of God and eat the fruit that was forbidden. It's no different than when Abraham chose to act on his own to produce the son that God had promised to him. Acting independent of God and choosing to rely on our ability and our strength, has always and will always produce death. Scripture tells us that God has condemned sin in the flesh. While there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ and choose to live life in the Spirit, condemnation is always present for those who choose to live life in the flesh.

Paul's struggle, mentioned in chapter 7 of Romans, is the struggle he and all of us have when we choose to continue living life in a way where we trust in our own ability and our own strength. However, when we choose to trust in God and lean on Him, then that struggle is over. When we quit attempting to be good and seeking to please God in our own strength, then we are tapping into the kind of life that God designed us to live. In the same way that we trust God for our salvation, it is equally as important for us to trust Him to live our new life. While asking "what would Jesus do," may sound good, the Christian life is so much more than attempting to become like Jesus. The kind of life God has designed for us to live is more about understanding the fact that the Spirit of Christ is in us and that we are already like Him. It's about understanding that we are like Him, not because of anything we've done, but because He, Himself has chosen to fix what's wrong with us. The Christian life then becomes more about simply allowing Christ to live His life through us rather than trying so hard to get my flesh to become perfect.

Our flesh has appetites that oppose God and allowing those appetites to drive our life will only lead us to death and destruction. Living in the Spirit is allowing the appetites or desires of the Spirit of God to drive our life. Only when we learn to lean on Him to live His life through us, can we truly tap into the victorious life that God longs for us to live. And, only then can we truly lay aside the struggle of wanting to do good, but not doing it and not wanting to do evil, but doing it.