Hate and Humility, part 2

Continued from part 1.

I want to repeat the last verses we went over in part 1, so you can read this separately.  Please do read over part 1, even though I'm back tracking a bit here.  It will help the both posts make a little more sense.

"So I find this law at work: Although 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 me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?"

It's making me think that Paul's not quite as level and dependable as I grew up believing.  Suddenly, he seems as vulnerable to sin as the rest of us.  It makes me amazed, however, what he says in the next verse.

 "Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

Thanks?  God?  Deliverance?  Paul looks not to a mere mortal to save him from his sin; he looks to God.  God and his deliverance, which comes through the Lord Jesus Christ, is what saves us from sin, even after we accept Christ as our Lord. As Christians, we view Paul as a role model; a fellow Christ-follower who led a great amount of people to the Lord.  In fact, through his writings, he's still leading people to faith!  But the best part about this passage is the vital reminder that even Paul, a good Christian who led many hundreds to Christ over the last almost two thousand years, wasn't perfect.  He struggled with sin with the best of us; at times, it got the better of him.  But the important message in this passage lies within the last verse:

"So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in my sinful nature a slave to the law of sin."

Don't beat yourself up about sinning, but don't try to sin.  You are a slave to God in the same way that your sinful nature is a slave to sin, and God wrestled sin to the ground when Christ rose from the dead, a victor over hell.  Over sin.  Over eternity.  Christ gave us a second chance, a chance to forget our sin nature and its temptations and follow him.  The only question on the table is this: are we able to accept the gift, and completely live for Him?