Thoughts on Romans 7

Today's reading: 1 Samuel 3; Romans 7

In my experience, there are few things more frustrating in trying to follow God than my own sin. You would think that the longer you walk with God the less sinful you would be, but it just seems like the longer I follow Him and the more I try to give of myself to Him, the worse and more frustrating my sin becomes...

It's comforting to read Romans 7 and hear Paul himself feel that same internal struggle with sin.

As frustrating as it is, when you take a step back and think about it, it really makes a lot of sense. So much so, in fact, that if someone didn't have this experience, I would seriously question the reality of their spiritual life.

To start with, there is a significant lack of understanding when we first start a relationship with the Lord. No matter how much knowledge about God or about the Bible we may have accumulated by that point, it is the indwelling Holy Spirit that illuminates the Scriptures to us in a truly life-giving way. This means that our understanding of what is or isn't sin will change over time as we learn more about God, His character, His will, etc. So just from that standpoint, the more we learn and understand, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, the more we will recognize sin that we were previously blind to.

That might make it sound like we feel increasingly sinful simply because we start categorizing more behaviors as sinful than we previously would, and while there is definitely at least some of that for many of us, there is a bigger shift in how we even think about sin that happens as we follow the Lord. Younger Christians (younger in the Lord, not necessarily in life), as well as non-Christians, tend to look at sin in a very black-and-white way as categories of behavior: "These things over here are sinful, those things over there are not, and there is a line in the middle that separates the two. If I tip-toe up to the line, it's not sinful, so I'm good, but if I step over the line, that's where sin starts." But then as you follow the Lord you bump into things that don't fit nicely into this system. You have friends who love the Lord as much as you do, but they put the line somewhere else, so who is right?? Or maybe your friend has behaviors in their "not sin" category that you have in your "sin" category, and that's even more difficult to figure out than just where the line should be drawn. Then, maybe you start seeing some victory over a particularly difficult or damaging area of sin in your life, and as you gain victory, you start to realize that your line has moved, and now you're pretty sure something you thought was fine a couple months ago is actually sinful. Or even more confusing, as you gain distance and victory over sin, something that you were sure was sinful in the past, you're pretty sure now is fine.

All this is because our God is a loving and relational God and our spiritual life is lived out in relationship with Him.

I have three children, and when it comes to what is and isn't allowed, and how seriously I take a behavior or issue, it very much changes from child to child based on so many different factors. My oldest might get in huge trouble for something that my youngest only gets a minor consequence for. That's not because I like my youngest the best, but it could be that my oldest is old enough to know better, or because it is a recurring and increasingly destructive pattern that is important to break, while maybe my youngest only did it because he saw his sister do it. There are also things my oldest is allowed to do that my youngest isn't because my oldest has shown the maturity and trustworthiness to be given more freedom and to use that freedom wisely, while the same opportunities might be highly destructive or inappropriate for my youngest.

So while there are some behaviors that are always sinful, and others that are always not, there is also a very broad range of actions which the Lord may or may not take issue with based on our past, our struggles, our maturity, our experience, our understanding, and a thousand other things.

What this eventually leads us to is a place where we stop asking, "Is this sinful?" or, "Is this allowed?" and we start asking, "Is this pleasing to the Lord?" or, "Does this bring Him glory?"

This is why I would question the reality of someone's spiritual life if they didn't feel this struggle against sin. As you grow in your relationship with the Lord the Holy Spirit starts to lead you away from categorizing behaviors and tip-toeing up to lines, and instead to a yearning for deeper and more uninterrupted closeness with God. The more the experience of closeness in your relationship with God becomes your priority, the more sin becomes a problem because of the way it impacts your experience of that relationship, and the less tolerant of sin in your own life you become. But the result of this is a soft and attentive conscience that recognizes more and more where the way you are living is not pleasing to the Lord.

When I stop and consider it objectively, I see significant growth and progress in so many areas of my life since I started a relationship with God, and the reality is that the areas of sin which I most feel plagued by, I probably wouldn't have even considered sin at all a decade ago...

So as frustrating as it is to feel like I'm still dealing with the same areas of sin more than a decade on, or to feel like whole new areas of sin have cropped up, it is encouraging to know that the Lord is bringing these things up so that, as I put more of myself in His hands, I can experience that much more of the fullness of the joy in relationship He has for me.

I am very much looking forward to the day that I stand before Him in sinless glory, knowing Him perfectly, just as I have been perfectly known. But until that day comes, I will continue to say with Paul, "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 myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin."

Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord indeed!