Paul exclaims in Romans 7:24, “What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” These words could have come from a person trapped in their attempt to gas himself, as discussed previously. Paul, like the masses of believers who lived before and have lived after him are able to grasp the wretchedness of this state.

I take the position that when Paul spoke of his body of death he was not referring to the actual physical body alone but the physical body as it is driven relentlessly toward sin by the principle of sin working in it. It is the whole package of a human being, created in the image of God, living in rebellion against God’s desires because of the mutinous work of sin at work within him.^[1] This is the core of your and my struggles as believers in this world. As much as we really want to live (like our suicide victim) we are at the same time engineering our own destruction. Even though we have received a new power to put sin to death in our lives, sin is relentless and doesn’t go down without a struggle. It has a carbon monoxide effect on you, making your body heavy like lead so you must struggle in everything you do. Even the smallest act of true spiritual worship, like turning off the ignition key, is seemingly insurmountably hard.

Isn’t victory over this horrible struggle with sin the thing that plagues you most in your Christian life? Isn’t it the things you see in yourself, the deception, the lies, the manipulation, the self-seeking, the greed, the pride, the lust, the gossip, that drive you again and again to your knees, despairing of ever breaking free of the cycle? As much as you desire to live for Christ in the fullest sense, you also desire to abandon yourself to your lusts in the fullest sense. In fact, if it were not for the issue of consequences, now and in eternity, you would struggle to find a reason to press forward in personal holiness.

It is in this that I want to encourage you. Notice that it is this very scourge from which we will be released by God’s grace. Our natural, sin-driven bodies will become spiritual, righteousness-driven bodies. God sees His dear people in agony under the burden of sin. He sees the effort you exert to rid your life of the God-insulting sins with which your live is riddled. He sees you sitting in that seat with the toxic carbon monoxide of sin bogging your whole life so you can’t live a clean, free, joyful life, like the one you long for. No matter how much you struggle, there is always something else. There is always another sin, another lust.

Oh what beauty do I see in the mind of God. Oh what thoughts of wonder cascade through His mind as He receives saint after saint into His presence, and lavishes upon them the thrill of being totally overwhelmed by what is most desirable and lovely, Jesus Christ.