“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?~ Rom. 7:24
I recently read accounts of one of the early Roman Empire’s most brutal practices in dealing with condemned criminals. It was the actual strapping of a dead body to the criminal, forcing him to live out his last few weeks by carrying a maggot infested corpse strapped to his bare back. Throughout this walking punishment, the process of decomposition caused the corpse to slowly leaked poisons into the criminal, making him sicker and sicker until he too finally died a very slow, and very painful, stench filled death.
Paul’s letters teach everywhere we go, we carry our putrefied “old man” around with us, till death do us part, or Christ’ second coming. No matter where we go, he will be waiting for us as we enter the city limits. No matter how fast we attempt to run from him, he invariably will outrun us. Learning to handle and live with this stigma is one of the great secrets in living a victorious Christian life.
Most certainly we’re to recognize his presence, but at the same time refuse him any and all rights! To disallow his existence in our lives is like not admitting there is an elephant in the room, when there actually is one. When Jesus told His followers they were to deny themselves, He did not mean to deny their existence, but rather their rights. As another has said, “That is, the negating of carnal self—self-will, self-assertion, the Adamic syndrome. The sinful, egocentric behavior-pattern developed at birth.”
I like the way one of our day’s godliest and great theologians (J.I. Packer) put it. “I nowadays think the way to deal with temptation is at once to say “No,” and with that to ask the Lord to keep saying, “No”, and actually to mortify—that is, do to death, squelch and enervate—the sinful urge.”
Some tell us to get out of Romans 7 and into Romans 8. But I noticed some years ago while reading these passages that the spiritual man of Romans 8 is still groaning like the carnal one in Romans 7. To quote Packer again, “No one ‘gets out of Romans 7’ in this world.” The battle is lifelong.
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