Thanks be to God who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord! Romans 7:25
This portion of verse 25 is the only cheerful statement in all of the seventh chapter of Romans. In reading through this chapter, we find Paul in a struggle for his life, as though he’s tangled up in an arm wrestle with an octopus. His two arms against the octopus’s eight. The poor man doesn’t stand a chance, and he knows it.
Paul isn’t necessarily complaining about his condition. Rather, he’s giving us an honest look at an impossible dilemma. In verse 25 he says that what he wants to do he doesn’t do. And again in verse 19 he says that he doesn’t do the good he wants to do. Instead, he keeps on doing evil.
The monstrous octopus that has a suffocating hold in Paul is his own sin. It gets in his way. In verse 21 he says that he finds a certain law at work: “Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me.” At least he intends to do good. He delights in God’s word (verse 22), which means that he is aware and accepting of what God requires of him.
But in verse 23 he goes on to say that he sees another law at work in him, waging war against the law of his mind (God’s word) and making him a prisoner of the law of sin.
Now we can see Paul’s unsolvable dilemma. He wants to do good. He knows what good is. He’s learned the instructions from God’s word of how to accomplish good.
And yet—evil aggravates his every step, throwing him off course, distracting him from his goal, distorting the instructions, and thwarting his efforts.
No wonder we see him thrown down on the mat heaving, exhausted, and ready to give up. “What a wretched man I am!” he cries out. “Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (verse 24).
Poor guy. It looks like he’s going to lose. The suction-cup-covered octopus of sin has triumphed. Evil appears stronger. It sucks the life right out of him a little at a time until he has no strength to fight and even less of a desire to.
And this is how Romans chapter 7, one of the most real and unrefined chapters of the Bible would end, except that he drags in one more breath and wheezes, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The answer to his dilemma has come. It is the deliverance of God. If God wouldn’t intervene on Paul’s behalf, death would have swallowed him. Evil would have had the last word if Paul operated in his own strength. But he doesn’t. He relies only and fully on God’s power to save him. Thank goodness the book of Romans doesn’t end there. It goes into a celebration in chapter 8 of living life in the Spirit, and then becoming more than conquerors through him who loved us (Romans 8:37).
Paul threw off the power his sinful nature had over him. He understood that he must be a slave to something (Romans 7;25). The reality of being bound to another doesn’t go away. But because of God’s work of redemption, we can serve one who gives freedom and love instead of evil, death, and destruction.
He says in Romans 7:17 that, “it is no longer myself who do it (those things he does not want to do) but the sin living in me.”
Paul faced down his spiritual enemies, whatever they were, and he completely defeated them because over in Galatians 2, he says, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I now live in the body, I live by faith in the son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me” (Galatians 2:20).
The Presence of Christ replaced the law of sin. This doesn’t mean, as believers, we no longer have the potential to sin, but that the nature still inside us that wants to indulge in it has decreasing power over us.
Paul’s struggle is our struggle. His dilemma is our dilemma. The good we want to do we don’t do. Evil comes more natural and suggests itself more provocatively than good does. But in the power of Christ, we can accomplish victory.
This passage from Romans is one of the suggested texts for the third Sunday of Lent. During this season of prayer and confession, call upon the Lord to deliver you from the slavery to sin, once and for all. Allow him to crucify it so that his Presence exclusively lives in you.
