In Romans 7 Paul talks about his own struggle with the flesh. He says (in my paraphrase) that he always seems to find himself doing exactly the opposite of what he desires to do, i.e. the good that he wants to do and knows he should do. Then he makes an interesting statement: “…if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.”

Wow, sounds like a license to sin; hey it’s not me who does it!! Man I’m likin’ this!

Hey, I can do whatever I want!

Want?? Go back and read it again: it says “If I do what I do not want it is no longer I who do it.”

Eee, let me play with this. I want to do good, and if I don’t do it and am enticed by sin, then it is no longer I who do it. And if I start thinking that I like this sin and might just camp out here for awhile, then I do want to do it and it really is me who does it. Then I’ll have no excuse.

Right.

Hmmm… Do I ever do something I don’t want to do? Paul says he does so I guess it’s possible. Is this stuff like blatant sin? Say he stole something and then goes “dang, I so didn’t want to do that… guess it wasn’t really me.”

Ok maybe not; he was a good man, it must have been really subtle sins. Maybe like when I get impatient too easily with someone and say something hurtful. Yeah that’s probably more like it. I think Paul had a temper–or that’s what I heard in a sermon somewhere.

So if that’s the case let me look at myself. Say I criticize someone out of a feeling of self-righteousness or brush them off when I’m busy…did I want to do that? What kind of will are we talking about here?

He goes on to say “So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.”

Delight? Well when you put it that way I suppose I don’t really delight when I brush that person off; I just wasn’t thinking. I was too concentrated on what I wanted to be doing.

“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.”

Ah, the old distinction between mind and body. So the desires are different. What I ‘want’ to do is what I understand to be good and therefore desire and plan to do. What I actually do in the flesh is not thought through, intentional, or premeditated.

How do I keep from using this as an excuse to sin ‘unintentionally,’ or ‘without thinking about it’? My dad always told me it was my fault for not thinking.

Paul never says he was no longer responsible for what he did, only that he must recognize that having done what he did not desire to do he has not become lost and without Christ all over again. His identity is still who Christ is.

But that only increases the guilt at having done what is against who Christ is and who he has made me to be by his sacrifice. I thought that I am now free from guilt in Christ and that I’m supposed to feel more freedom? “Who will deliver me from this body of death?”

I repeat: ” 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.” And he goes on to say “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit. For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit. To set the mind on the flesh is death, but to set the mind on the Spirit is life and peace.”

So basically what Paul is saying here is “hey, so we sin, granted, but if you have repented and been filled with Christ it doesn’t do any good to keep thinking about it. Introspection is good; but only if it leads you to realize that there’s nothing there without Christ! Look to him! Your not condemned for the sin, so set your eyes on the only thing that’s going anywhere: your relationship with your savior.”

Sounds good to me, but I can’t even decide who I’m supposed to be with this italics font, much less come to a conclusion on eternal significance.