Below is a comment from a reader based on the following post:
The message of God’s tremendous grace is easy to confuse with a gospel that allows sin without consequences. I must struggle with sin as Paul describes in Rom 7, to try to live holy within the guard rails, not swerving toward either a gospel that allows sin, nor a gospel of salvation by works.
My Supportive Comment:
If you read Rom 5–8 slowly and in one sitting, you will find that is summarizes like this:
Rom 5 - We are justified (declared innocent) freely by the blood of Jesus Christ (Rom.5:1) when we believe in Jesus, trusting in the cross work for our salvation. This salvation is unconditional and permanent. Trusting in Christ saves you instantaneously and absolutely. Why? Because our innocence is declared by God through the righteousness of His Son, and not by our righteousness. We are saved by the obedience of Christ, not by our own.
Rom 6 - Having been saved by God’s grace, we need to know some things. Paul informs us, “Know ye not...”, or “Know this…”. In other words, Paul is telling us to get into our head and into our heart the fact that we are transferred into the ministration of His Son (which is righteousness, life, obedience, grace). We are no longer under the ministration of Adam (which is unrighteousness, death, disobedience, wrath). Because we belong to Christ’s ministration, we must renew our thinking, and recon ourselves to be dead to sin. Sin cannot affect us because we have been crucified with Christ. We need to get our thinking in line with our new spiritual condition.
Rom 7 - This chapter informs us that we are also dead to the law through the body of Christ. This death to the law means that we can now function in newness of Spirit. In other words, we are no longer under the letter of the law, neither disciplined under it, like children, but now we are to grow up and learn the will of our Father, who gives us the liberty to exercise ourselves freely according to the influence of the Word of God in us. This is why we need to get into the Bible and learn what is God’s will and desires for us under this new ministration. We grow in Christ by growing in His Word. Christ forms within us and lives out of us His will, represented by the fruit of the Spirit, Gal.5:22–23.
Rom 8 - As we grow in the Word, and have it influence our thoughts, speech and actions, we start to live in accordance with Gods will. We find that sin has less and less control over us because our mind is becoming increasingly renewed by the Word. Our spiritual life is starting to mortify the flesh. Those who walk in the spirit (in accordance with the Word) will not fulfill the desires of the flesh. Understand that this is primarily in the mind. The Word must dominate your mind. Thinking the Word, and living the Word, will quench the evil thoughts of lust and sin. We are to pull down those thoughts that exalt themselves above the knowledge of God (His Word) and bring them captive to the obedience of Christ (His Word within us, 2Cor.10:5). When this happens more and more, increasing over time as we become stronger in the Word, we start to walk after the Spirit, and we experience less and less condemnation (Rom.8:1–2). We become sons of God (Rom.8:14) as we mature in the things of God.
So, as you can see, there is no part that we play in this process, except to study God’s Word, rightly divided (Romans to Philemon). Get the Word in you and allow it to work itself out of you. The rest happens automatically as the Word takes root in your mind and starts to change you from within.
WARNING: The moment you slack in reading and study of the Word, you mind will start to dwell back into sin, like the Corinthians who were babes in Christ and lived loosely. (Remember, Rom 6). On the other end of the scale, the moment you try to live for God under your own rules and laws, you move out of grace and bring condemnation back upon you, like the Galatians. (Remember, Rom 7). Romans 6 and 7 are what happens when you violate the foundation set my Paul in Romans 5–8. We are dead to sin and dead to the law, but when you veer off into loose living, or when you veer into living under the law, you fall into ditches. Both Corinthians and Galatians are reproof and correction books to correct the misguiding's of these two churches in these deviations. Get the Word into you and live it out. By the Word you will learn increasingly to overcome sin in the flesh and live by the law of the Spirit of life, and in so doing, walk as God wants you to walk.
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