- Read: Romans 7:1-25
- Memorize: You Choose a verse, then comment what you chose and why.
The law has no authority over those of us who have been set free, and yet there is a battle inside of us that continues throughout our lives. Before God saves us we are enslaved to sin because our nature determines that we only want what is wrong, or that we want what is right for the wrong reasons, which makes it wrong. In other words, we never have the desire to please God. But at salvation we are given a new nature that wants to do what is right, but the old habits still remain. It is no longer a question of authority, but it remains a battle of priority.
In junior high I had a track coach that told me how to train and gave me a schedule of workouts to do each day. When I wanted to prepare for competing on the college level, I went back to that coach and asked him what I should do. Instead of giving me a new training regiment, he gave me magazines, pamphlets and other information that would allow me to come up with my own plan for getting in shape. I had a hard time with this because I was used to my coach telling me what to do, and I wanted him to continue in this role, but he recognized that I was no longer under his authority, and urged me to continue in growth as an athlete.
There were ongoing difficulties as I stepped out into the new world of training myself, and I kept having the temptation of running back to my coach and the old ways of being told what to do. We can draw a parallel to our spiritual lives in that our old nature, like the coach, told us what to do and we had to do it; but now with the new nature we are free to make wise decisions on our own. We will continue to have the struggle of wanting to go back to the way it was and to embrace sin, but God pushes us along in becoming more and more conformed into the image of his Son.
The struggle will never go away completely in this life, but rest assured that the more you do the right thing, even when you are tempted to do what is wrong, the more you will find it easy to continue in what is right.
Comment:
- Explain the phrase "For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do."
- What memory verse did you choose, and why?
1.I think that this is saying that what we do we hate to do(sinning). But what we want to do we don't do we normally do the wrong thing and sin.?
ReplyDelete2. I chose 1 Corinthians 15:3-4 because I have to memorize it for my other bible study. And it is a good verse about God and what he did for us.
1. good intentions often get replaced with doing the wrong thing, because it's easier or seems better at the time. we don't always sin because we really really want to. sometimes we just succomb to temptation even when we know it's not what we want for ourselves.
ReplyDelete2. 1 corinthians 10:13. it's a good reminder that temptation is never too much for us to handle or too hard for us to turn away from. plus i already had it half-memorized.
1. We want to sin, but we should do what we hate to do, and that is put time aside for God.
ReplyDelete2. Romans 7:4, because it's one of the main points of the whole section, and it says that we can become new people through christ.