Who will save me from this body of sin and death? A Meditation on Romans 7

One of the greatest laments of St. Paul echoes a similar lament of saints throughout the ages:  what I want to do I do not do… and what I do not want to do, that I do.  Why is it, that even the greatest saints in the history of the church, including St. Paul, can’t escape the influence of sin?  Why is it, that the people of God, baptized into Jesus’ victory over sin, death, and hell, can’t seem to escape the grip of wicked thoughts, words, and deeds—of evil done, and good things left undone?  Why is it that Christians from the earliest centuries and down to our present day, begin their ancient worship liturgies with an act of confession and contrition, asking God to be merciful to we poor, sinful beings?  This is no small concern, and getting the answers wrong can do a lot of damage.  It’s no wonder that St. Paul devotes several chapters of his letter to the church at Rome, to discussing the Law and sin in the life of the Christian.  We ought to listen carefully to him.

What St. Paul describes very well, are the practical problems all mankind faces.  Though originally created good, we are all fallen, such that no one is righteous—no, not one.  No one after the Fall has inherited from their fallen parents a nature devoid of sin and selfish desire.  All our powers are corrupted through that Fall, so that even our best intentions are marked with sin.  Of course, we still have many natural powers, able to live and move and think… but these powers after the Fall are broken, warped, and twisted.  We are sinners by our Fallen nature, not because we were created that way, but because we corrupted ourselves this way.  This is the common plight of man to which the Law of God testifies, so that no one might stand in His presence and think himself holy.  God’s Law, which reflects the perfection in which we were originally made, declares now to us how far we have fallen in mind, body, and spirit, and how high the mountainous peak of righteousness soars unassailable above us.

But thanks be to God, that He has sent His Son to seek and to save our fallen race!  To every fallen man, woman, and child, Jesus gives Himself as Savior and Redeemer.  Taking the curse of our Fall upon Himself through the Cross, He rises again to give us His victory over sin, death, and the grave.  He comes to give us forgiveness of our sins, so that the condemnation of the Law might be silenced.  Though the Law stands forever as the holy mirror of God’s righteousness, revealing our sinfulness and brokenness, its condemnation and judgment are removed when the image reflected in us is that of our Victorious Savior.  Having been baptized into Christ, and living by grace through faith in Him, we have His perfect, holy, divine nature poured into our own.  His Holy Spirit working in us through His Word and Sacraments, there is now something more to us than just our fallen nature:  we become images, reflections of Jesus.

And this is why the Christian always struggles with sin in this world.  We are a divided creature.  According to our fallen nature inherited through our parents from Adam, we are sinful and twisted, addicted to the ways of death and misery.  But according to the nature we have inherited from God through Jesus Christ, we are blameless and holy, washed in grace and alive by faith.  This new nature Jesus has given us by His Spirit, resists the old nature, seeks the good, and works to be holy as our Father in heaven is holy.  Our new nature seeks to drown the old nature in the waters of our baptism each and every day, leaning on the Word of God to both empower and absolve us.  We are each of us one person with two natures—one destined for glory, and one destined for destruction.

This is why St. Paul can say, that if we live after the flesh—after the lusts and twisted desires of our old sinful nature—we will die with it.  The old corrupted nature has no place in the holiness of heaven, nor in the new creation to come.  But, if we live in the Spirit, we live in the new and holy nature of Christ given to us, which is right at home in the Father’s eternal presence, both in this world and the next.  As individual people, born from above by Water and Spirit, we are free to yield ourselves either to the new nature of Jesus or to the old nature of Adam.  To whichever we yield ourselves, that is our master—either to Jesus as Savior, or to the devil who enslaved Adam by sin and death.  This is the daily battle of the Christian, fighting to resist the twisted old nature coursing through our veins, and yielding to the Spirit in our new nature given by Christ.

But this war between our natures does not last forever.  Because our old nature is destined to die, we are destined to be free of it.  The Christian struggles in faith, living by grace, knowing that the promise of the Gospel is sure to all who believe—that even though we shall die, we shall live.  For while the old nature must die because of its sin and evil, the new nature cannot die, because it is holy and righteous and pure.  The nature we have received in Jesus Christ lives forever, just as He lives forever.  Before Christ, death was a terror to us, because alone in our sinful nature, death was just the gateway to the hell we deserved.  But now in Christ Jesus, even as our old nature simply dies, hell’s mouth is shut to us, and our new nature rises forever, washed and clean in the Blood of the Lamb.  Death is no longer a terror to the children of God in Christ, for our lives are hidden in Christ where death cannot touch them.  The old nature will most certainly die, but the Christian does not live according to his corrupted sinful nature—he lives according to the new nature, by the power of His Holy Spirit working through the Everlasting Gospel of Jesus Christ.

This is the answer St. Paul gives to his rhetorical question, of who shall save us from this body of sin and death.  It is Christ Jesus, our risen and saving Lord!  The same Lord who paid the eternal debt of our sinful nature, gives His eternal life to all who will repent and believe His Gospel.  We struggle in this life because we are a divided creature, at the same time sinner and saint.  But as our eyes close for the last time in this world, and our sinful nature is finally laid to rest, our eyes shall open once more to the eternal victory of Jesus Christ for us.  Be of good cheer, dear Christian.  What Jesus has begun in you, He shall bring to completion.  He is true to His Word.  Hear Him.  Fight on in Faith and Repentance.  Believe, and live.  Amen.