Re: LostBoy:
Submitted by Dirk G on August 31 1999 at 18:26:15
In reply to LostBoy: Submitted by d on August 31 1999 at 17:46:10
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Dear LostBoy, d is right! The struggle may feel like hell, but you're the better for fighting. And you're in good company, too. I know that St. Paul has kind of a bad reputation in some circles, but when I read your posts, I immediately thought of what he said in Romans 7:15 - 8:4. 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. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God--through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God's law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Therefore, there is now 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. St. John Chrysostom was a bishop in the 4th century who said, "I believe, O Lord, and I confess, that thou art truly the Christ, the Son of the Living God, who didst come into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief." Don't despair. Christ went through Hell and back for you. Dirk |