The Conflict Within
THE CONFLICT WITHIN
ROMANS 7:15-20
Paul writes about the inner battle in his life.
This passage looks like a confession of defeat, but it takes an extraordinary Christian to deny being aware of the inner strife which Paul admits. This must be an utterance of his Christian experience, no mere recollection of unregenerate days. It requires a true Christian to acclaim the excellence of God’s demands, and strive to make them real in life’s experience. It is God’s prompting in the heart which fires this deep desire for holiness, and this profound dissatisfaction with all achievement. It is absurd mechanically to interpret the moving words of a great and noble soul, to note that no specific reference is made in them to the Holy Spirit, and therefore to assign the confession to a section of life unblessed by God’s presence. It is the Holy Spirit which prompts the mood described, and the Holy Spirit which sanctions the confession itself.
Paul discovered that life was a battle, and that human nature slips easily towards evil. Those who teach otherwise deceive those they teach. The New Testament sets no limits to our victory over sin and our corrupt self, but it can lead to nothing but frustration, disappointment and despair to suggest to those who accept Christ that sinless perfection lies within easy reach and to give the impression that flawless virtue is the immediate mark and ready attainment of those who follow him.
“The picture is true for the whole course of Christian life here on earth, for there is never an hour of that life when the man who ‘says he has no sin’ does not ‘deceive himself’ (1 John 1:8). And if that sin is but simple defect, a ‘falling short of the glory of God’, if it is only that mysterious tendency which, felt or not, hourly needs a divine counteraction, still, that man ‘has sin,’ and must long for a final freedom” (Handley Moule, adapted).