Perverse and foolish oft I strayed,
But yet in love He sought me;
Thy rod and staff my comfort still,
Thy cross before to guide me.
That’s the third verse to the hymn “The King of Love.” It’s a wonderful description of the human heart with its cravings and longings straining against the leash of godliness. Our hearts are deceptive, even wicked. And we can’t fully know them. Sometimes we seem to not know them at all.
The apostle was wrapped in struggle and combat against his heart. We can get dizzy at the twists and turns Paul recounts in his battle against indwelling sin.
We know that the law is spiritual; but I am unspiritual, sold as a slave to sin. I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do. And if I do what I do not want to do, I agree that the law is good. As it is, it is no longer I myself who do it, but it is sin living in me. I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my sinful nature. For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For what I do is not the good I want to do; no, the evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it” (Romans 7:14-20).
Can you hear the great saint’s frustration? “I do not understand what I do. … I know that nothing good lives in me…. The evil I do not want to do–this I keep on doing.” In his very body, a war wages. And the war won’t be won by force of will. What he wants to do he can’t do. The war won’t be won with positive thinking. He sees that the Law is good but his mind is assaulted by his flesh. The war won’t be one with consistent habits. He finds himself doing what he doesn’t want to do and leaving undone what he wants to perform. One can well understand why Paul cries out, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (v. 24).
And that’s when Paul’s help makes His entrance. Paul looks away from himself–both that part of him that wants to do right and that part of him that constantly fails. He looks completely away from himself, both abandoning his righteousness and fleeing his sin. And He looks up to another:
But thanks be to God–through Jesus Christ our Lord! (v. 25a)
Why, at this point, does Paul praise God through Jesus? He explains in what follows:
Therefore, there is no no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit. (Rom. 8:1-4)
His help comes from the Lord, who condemned sin in sinful man so that the Law’s righteous requirements are fully met in us.
And that’s where our help comes from too. Notice verse 25. Jesus Christ is our Lord, if we trust in Him. He is not only the apostle’s Lord. Paul does not write “my” Lord. And I’m glad He didn’t. For the good news is that Christ vanquishes the power and pull of sin in all those who accept His sin offering and His righteousness as their own. And all those who do, are freed to sing the words of “Come Thou Fount”:
O to grace how great a debtor
Daily I’m constrained to be!
Let Thy goodness, like a fetter,
Bind my wandering heart to Thee.
Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it,
Prone to leave the God I love;
Here’s my heart, O take and seal it,
Seal it for Thy courts above.O that day when freed from sinning,
I shall see Thy lovely face;
Clothed then in blood washed linen
How I’ll sing Thy sovereign grace;
Come, my Lord, no longer tarry,
Take my ransomed soul away;
Send thine angels now to carry
Me to realms of endless day.