Struggling with Sin

In Romans 7:15-19 Paul expresses something I think most of us can relate to.

“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.”

Many times I’ve wanted to quit doing something I know isn’t right or good for me, and yet I keep on doing it. How can this be if I say I want God’s best for me?

It’s called sanctification, a process by which God makes us more like Himself by renewing His image in us.

“We are not preaching a state, but a walk. The highway of holiness is not a place, but a way. Sanctification is not a thing to be picked up at a certain state of our experience and forever after possessed, but it is a life to be lived day by day and hour by hour.” Hannah Whitall Smith

God has given Christians the power to break free from the temptations of sin. His will is for us is to be conformed to the image of His son, who He sent to take the fall for all the times I do what Paul did – and do the things I do not want to do, even when I know better.

“It is a life and walk of faith we have entered upon; and if we fail in it, our only recovery must lie in an increase of faith, not in a lessoning of it.” Hannah Whitall Smith