"Oh My God! What Have I Done!"

Romans 7: 21-25 – “Oh My God – What Have I Done!”

So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!

What is happening in this scripture? – Paul is writing to the church in Rome. The more we study ancient Rome at this time, the more we learn that in addition to the taxes, the enslavements, the conquering and invasion of other lands and peoples, there was much debauchery and economic injustice going on in Rome. Rome was a large, sprawling city, and like any other large, densely populated city, you could participate in just about any behavior you wanted, if you had the mind and the money. Paul was a human being, and like all human beings Paul had weakness of the flesh. Here in this letter he seems to be addressing some of the practices accepted in Rome at that time, and delineating how Christians are to behave, even in the midst of what might be accepted by the larger culture. In so doing, Paul indicts himself, as a man. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. 22For I delight in the law of God in my inmost self, 23but I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind, making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24Wretched man that I am! Then Paul asks a universal question to himself and to the church: Who will rescue me from this body of death?

How is this happening in the world today? – I’m no goody two shoes. I know no honest man or woman who is. Whether it be public or private, deeds or thoughts, all of us are capable and participate in thoughts or behaviors that separate us from our own relationship to God’s grace. It’s not easy to be “good” sometimes, maybe most of the time, and it’s not easy to accept the strange logic of God’s grace. As a professional counselor I hear this question that Paul expresses from a lot of people: When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me? Another way to put this is, “I want to be accepted and acceptable, but I don’t want to change, or “I’m no damned good and neither is anyone else!”, or ‘Oh my God! What have I done?” When I survey not only my life, but the world which lies in front of me, via the evening news or the papers, I sometimes ask myself, “Where is the hope? Can things ever turn around? Can it ever get better? Are we doomed?”

How is this story our story? - Paul called it a law. When I want to do what is good, evil lies close at hand. Sometimes its because I think I think I know what doing good is, what’s good for someone else, and put myself in God’s place to judge. Lord help me to remember the only way out of this trap is to remember it is a trap, and to be graceful, in accepting my need for acceptance, and being graceful to others.