There Is Deliverance

Yesterday’s passage ended with Paul in the depths of despair over his inability to obey God as he desired. “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” he cried. Today he speaks words of comfort to himself by answering his own question.

Paul has already taught the Romans that, in the past, Christ has delivered His people from the penalty of sin. He Himself took God’s wrath against their sin upon Himself. Furthermore, in teaching the Romans that they had died to sin (Rom. 6:2), Paul showed them that they had been freed from sin’s power in the present. As we have seen in our studies in the latter half of Romans 7, sin is a determined enemy and still can hinder even believers. Its power is shattered in that Christ’s people have been given new desires to please God, and through the power of the Holy Spirit working in them they can resist sin and submit to God’s law. Nevertheless, the battle is ongoing, for sin will always be with us. This seems to be the heart of Paul’s lament here—he is looking for a future free from sin’s presence. “The deliverance Paul is looking for here is specifically a final deliverance from the very presence of sin, which has its hold on him now only through ‘this body of death,’ or ‘this dying body,’ ” Dr. James M. Boice writes. This victory will come in time, when God at last will take His people to be with Himself and will do away with their sinful natures. At long last, God, through the ministry of Jesus Christ, will deliver us from our bodies of death.

For the present, however, the struggle goes on. As Paul says, “with the mind I myself serve the law of God, but with the flesh the law of sin.” So it is for all believers. We may even come to the point of despair, wondering whether we will ever experience victory over sin. At such times we must follow Paul’s example and remind ourselves of the work God is yet to do. “This almost-despairing struggle against sin is the experience of us all, at least at times,” Boice writes. “All Christians find themselves wanting to do what is right (because of the life of Christ within) but of not being able to do what they would like to do (because of the continuing presence of indwelling sin) . . . Although the struggle is a real one and difficult, the outcome is not bleak or uncertain but glorious—because of God.”