Romans 7: A New Allegiance

Let’s be honest. We all know personally what Paul is experiencing here. We all have known the good we should do and haven’t done it. We all have known what we should resist and we gave in. The guilt we feel in the face of these things is a sign that we are healthy enough to still know right from wrong. It is completely illogical and foolish. But sin can have such a hold over people that it seems to do things against their own will.

Even Paul knew what that was like, before he met Christ on the road to Damascus (Acts 9, Rom 7:14) he could not stop doing the evil he hated (Rom 7:19). Paul found out that his Judaism was unable to empower him to do the good that he desired. Within him, an insidious and powerful law imprisoned him. Though he delighted in the law of God, he was powerless to live it.

We all know and understand that dilemma, knowing what to do and cannot do it. It is not freedom but bondage, and it is extremely destructive. Few good things come out of that state. But hope do we have?

Paul places his hope solely and definitively in Jesus Christ our Lord who alone can free us from the bonds of the law of sin. But this requires complete surrender to Christ as our Lord and there lies the rub and the difficulty. To be free I must become a slave to Christ. There are only two options a slave to sin or a slave to Christ. A change of allegiance to Christ set us free therefore we are free and empowered to do the good we desire to do.

Posted by Aaron Miner