READ – Romans 7:14-25
This might be one of the most despairing passages in the New Testament. Paul – this giant of the Christian faith – is nakedly transparent about his struggle with sin: “I want to do what is good but I don’t. I don’t want to do what is wrong, but I do it anyway.”
We’ve all been there, haven’t we?
We’re all addicts.
You might not be addicted to the needle or the bottle. (Or you might be.) But all of us seem to have an unhealthy addiction to sin. We try to stop, but fail. We try to replace these unhealthy urges with positive alternatives, but we can’t seem to succeed in that, either. Like Paul, we can sink into despondency, crying out, “Oh what a miserable person I am!”
And yet we have cause for great hope. Like Paul we can also say, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
Because, when your willpower fails you have access to His.