A new year has started and people, including myself, make resolutions or rather, they vow to do something better this year than last year. By now, some have probably fallen away from those resolutions and gone back to life as “normal,” or they will in about 3 months. I have an encouraging word regarding this pattern.

Grace.

Let me explain and see if you agree…

Do you remember learning about Jesus for the first time? I do. The message regarding sin and salvation tugged at my heart and I committed my life to Him. And then began the quest to do the right thing all the time. This resulted in many trips to the alter.  I didn't understand grace for myself. I didn't understand bringing thoughts captive to Christ. I didn't understand that although I had a new nature and was saved, I still had old thought patterns to deal with and that didn't make me a failure, it made me human and I didn't have to stay in a place of defeat. I didn't understand the victory from which I was now living as a believer in Christ even though I'd confessed, received the forgiveness offered and was baptized. The continued struggle to be "good" was very real.

Near the end of Romans 7, Paul describes a similar struggle to be "good enough." If we stop there in our reading, we may find either comfort in the fact that he too struggled, or we can find and excuse for just "being a sinner saved by grace." Neither are good choices. Both keep sin in the forefront of our mind, always trying to do the right thing rather than on the Law of Spirit life that us free from that sin.  Done. A completed deal. Christ paid the price. We simply have to apply it. But how can we apply something we do not understand? It isn't just a "ticket to heaven." The law of Spirit Life is a tool belt for life lived successfully.
 

In my studies, I've come to the conclusion that I do not believe Paul ever meant to have a division between Romans 7 and chapter 8 as our current bibles divide it. The Apostle Paul in a prolific writer, and he loves run-on sentences, and his subjects and tangents can run all over the place. I usually end up making notes and word maps while looking things up when I study his letters. But that's just me.  Suffice it to say, he is not always an easy read. And Romans is no different. He has one subject in mind here and he's saying it with a lot of added stuff. Those verses at the end of 7 that describe a person conflicted with two natures is a person BEFORE conversion and he contrasts it with the verses we define as Chapter 8. The LAW OF SPIRIT LIFE is what makes the difference. He is no longer that way and the rest of chapter 8 tells us how he is different and why.e.
 
I still hear committed believers talk about their struggle with two natures. They seem stuck in Chapter 7 and have yet to apply Chapter 8. While two natures most likely do conflict BEFORE we are saved, how could that still be true AFTER our conversion? How could we have "two natures" if conversion brings about a new creation? Would we now have three natures? I don't think so. (Consider Ephesians 2, Colossians 1, 2 Corinthians 5) And then there is the parable about pouring new wine into an old wine skin (Mark 2, Luke 5) In context, those verses are talking about the Old and New Covenant, but I think it applies to us as well.

How our feelings both physical and emotional and seeking to satisfy those feelings is to set our minds on the flesh, as Paul says. This would be our agenda, what makes ME happy and how I FEEL, "follow your heart ", etc…you get the point. I am not saying we should discount those things, certainly not. They are a part of who we are as God created us. However, setting agendas based on those struggles, I have found, only keeps alive old ways of thinking. How? By allowing us to fall back into old patterns of living. Isa 43: 18-19 God admonishes the people through Isaiah NOT to call to mind the former ways that he is doing a NEW thing because he wanted them to step into what He was doing.

The pattern is there.

Why would we want to keep old thought patterns alive? Unless we LIKED the old dysfunctional ways...? Unless we WANTED to keep doing sinful things? Maybe we like the predictability, or the attention that telling others of our struggle brings?

Of course not.

NO serious committed believer in Christ WANTS to remain in the old ways that proved dysfunctional or disobedient. That is not the attitude of one who has truly changed their allegiance from darkness to the Kingdom of Light. Remaining in the old patterns of thought and behavior will result in self-destruction over time. Why? Because it wasn't what we were made for any more than a car was made to run on sugar water rather than gasoline. It is not that old thought patterns don't ever enter the mind of one who is converted, far from it. Everything we do or say begins as a thought. It's what we do with that thought that is important, and that  is up to us to choose.

From a place of Victory in Christ,  dysfunctional/sinful thoughts are brought into alignment with the Word of God (Scripture) and the Spirit (received at baptism). So we have to know Him and know His Word. We have to know the scriptures and what He said. The believer is not a helpless victim of old ways and the goal is never to somehow keep them alive through wallowing in regret, remorse. Destructive thoughts to linger by entertaining them instead they are confronted with what God says about them and about us, His Kids. If help is needed to do that, then help is available through Holy Spirit, the Word and also other believers who may have ideas that help. If we were meant to do it all alone, God would have never created Eve. That is why God puts us in community. 

It takes time, and grace for self as well as others.  Thanks be to God we are set free from the chains that hold us to that old thinking by His Spirit and His Word.

Be encouraged. Read Romans 8.

This is Spirit life.

Blessings,

Anne

 * This is just my experience. I am not a mental health counselor. Sometimes professional help is needed and this is not a failure, just a reality.