Bible
Study: Romans 7, 18 to 25. And Luke 12, 54 to 59.
A first
glance at St. Paul’s confession in our first reading this morning may give a
misleading impression about the nature of spiritual life. It is like St. Paul
is saying we human beings are totally useless and can amount to nothing as far
the avoidance of sin is concerned.
Hear him:
“For I
know that NOTHING good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what
is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I
do not want is what I do. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I
that do it, BUT SIN WHICH DWELLS WITHIN ME.”
Romans 7, 18 to 20.
Do these
words not sound very familiar? Don’t you experience a hard time meeting up with
those resolutions of yours? How come the moment you decide to avoid a
particular bad habit, temptations suddenly increase and you begin to feel that
you have no other choice? Why are we always doing the very things that make us
feel sad and ashamed?
Is it
really the case that sin dwells inside of us? That is, are we DETERMINED to sin
whether we like it or not? If that is the case, when why do have to feel guilty
for doing wrong? St. Paul doesn’t end there, the concluding aspect of this
passage is even more puzzling:
“For I
delight in the law of God, in my inmost self, BUT I see in my members another
law at war with the law of my mind and MAKING ME CAPTIVE to the law of sin
which 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
of myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law
of sin.” Romans 7, 22 to 25.
As much as
St. Paul answers our earlier questions by saying “Thanks be to God through
Jesus Christ our Lord,” he seems to add a line that when taken at face value
can be very misleading, “So then, I of myself serve the law of God with my
mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” It is like saying, all we have
to do is to obey God only with our mind while we allow our captive flesh do
whatever it likes. Or, that our flesh is meant for sin and nothing more while
our worship of God is only a matter of the heart. It is based on this wrong
interpretation that many so-called Christians find justification for living a
sinful life claiming that as long as their minds are attuned to God, all is
well. Some even argue that sin no longer exists and that no matter what they do
now, Christ has already taken care of it on the cross 2000 years ago.
If it is
the case that because of our flesh, we are totally condemned to sin, if it is
true that we are captives, that we lack the capacity to do what we know is
right, then how do we reconcile Romans Chapter 7 with Romans Chapter 6? Wasn’t it
the same St. Paul that said: So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin
and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal
bodies, to make you obey their passions. Do not yield your members to sin as
instruments of wickedness, but yield yourselves to God as men who have been
brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments of
righteousness. Romans 6, 11 to 13.
The answer
lies in one word: GRACE. By talking about the flesh as weak, useless and
captive, by describing the flesh as serving a law of sin, St. Paul wants us to
take attention away from the flesh as much as possible! What St. Paul does here
is to paint a picture of a ferocious beast so that we would be able to identify
an Angel when we see one. The flesh here is the beast and grace is the Angel.
Having told us to run away from sin and not let it reign in us, St. Paul tells
us that we have a beast inside of us that loves sin more than anything else and
this beast can be so demanding and quite tricky. He pretends to be of
assistance to us in combating sin but the moment we rely on it, it leads us
straight into sin again. Therefore, we have no reason to trust our flesh. We can
never win the war against sin through our flesh.
Without the
grace of God, we are really useless and defenceless against sin. Our flesh
craves for sin by nature and we will never succeed in training it otherwise,
even if we flog it, hide it in the mountains, starve it for days and months, it
will still crave for sin. So, to win the war against sin, we don’t have to
fight against the flesh as though we can ever conquer it, all we have to do is
to keep running again and again to the feet of Jesus to ask for GRACE. Every
temptation should make you drop to your kneels to ask for help. We cannot get enough
of it. Grace is like the air that we breathe, it has to be available all the
time so we need to keep praying all the time. Even a few minutes without air
can suffocate us to death so also, a few minutes without that constant prayer
asking for God’s assistance, grace, can lead us into the worst of sin.
When we
know that without grace, we are nothing, it should lead us to become very
prayerful. It is just wisdom on our part to use prayer as a wedge against
sinfulness. We don’t have to wait till we have fallen into sin before we
remember that we ought to have asked for grace beforehand. This is what Jesus
was talking about in the Gospel passage, “And why do you not judge for
yourselves what is right? As you go with your accuser before the magistrate, MAKE
AN EFFORT TO SETTLE WITH HIM ON THE WAY, lest he drag you to the judge, and the
judge hand you over to the officer, and the officer put you in prison.” Luke
12, 57 to 58. Make an effort to avoid falling into sin by being prayerful. This
is wisdom itself speaking.
Let us
Pray:
Lord
Jesus, give me the wisdom to always ask for your grace even before I face
temptations and grant that with each temptation, I may remember to fall on my
kneels to ask for help rather than trust in my flesh. Amen.
Good morning.
Be Happy. Live Positive. Have Faith. It is well with you.
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