This is training camp week and which means well, I didn't know what it meant at first. The first three days involved a lot of eating, sessions and sleeping. The one thing that has stood out to me the most was one of the first nights and talking about Romans 6,7,8. Now I've always been aware of the law that was set out for us as believers of Christ, but I knew that Jesus dying for us took that law away, not that it is irrelevant, just that we no longer need it to be right with God. We started talking about how we use the law and the rules as our way of making ourselves better, as kind of our medicine. Then when it doesn't work, we get confused, down and even depressed from our lack of ability to fix ourselves. But the beauty of God is that He gives us grace and that our healing comes from grace alone.
Continuing on, I've always lived in a sense that sin is still attacking me in many aspects of my life. The verse from Romans 7:22-23 is a verse I so often identify with:
"For in my inner self I joyfully agree with God's law. But I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body."
Why can I not just follow Christ like I want to and it was brought out that night. Sin is not my problem, I am my problem. See I am dead to sin – "we were buried with Him by baptism into death" (Romans 6:4) – and dead to the law – "the law has authority over someone as long as he lives….therefore, my brothers, you also were put to death in relation to the law" (Romans 7:1 and 4) -and can not be attacked by either. So the law exposes us to sin and the purpose of the law was to bring us to something, but now we have that something and no longer need the law. Christ is the fullfillment of the law! So now that I am dead to both, I am not affected by either. Therefore, the issue in my life with my struggles is myself, Christ died to pay for my sin and sin can only have power when I allow it to have power. My own evil desires are what bring sin back into my life.
Whew, that was a lot to try to lay out and make sense of, maybe just for me. But I took away that I don't have to struggle with sin at all, I choose to. God has already sent a solution to my sin problem and I've just not fully accepted it. So this next year and even now, I'm going to be focusing hard on trusting that God has demolished sin from my life!!! Please pray for this in my life!
