Botched Results Today's Three-minute Bible Study Print, Study and Apply Title: Botched Results------------------------- Date: 1/10/2002 Keywords: "faith" "grace" "sin" "works" Welcome to eXXit, the web site designed to help you stand strong in the face of sexual temptation. Passage: Romans 7:18-25* 18. 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. 19. 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. 20. 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. 21. So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. 22. For in my inner being I delight in God's law; 23. 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. 24. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25. 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. Question What was Paul's "sinful nature"?   Practical help In preceding chapters in Romans, Paul learns that works can't produce righteousness. Only grace and faith do that. Now, in chapter 7, he discovers that these same works can't maintain righteousness either. Only grace and faith do that as well. But he learns this the hard way. He tries to maintain his righteousness with works. "Sinful nature" is what he calls this motivation — and the botched results. He makes it plain that this nature isn't his true self: "For in my inner being I delight in God's law" (verse 22). He concludes the chapter by reviewing his choices: "in my mind [faith] a slave to God's law" or "in the sinful nature [works] a slave to the law of sin." Is it any wonder he's thankful for the first option? This is a good example for us Christians struggling with porn. We'll never overcome it with human efforts. We need to depend on the basics: grace and faith. So next time we think we're in smut's grip, let's remember to believe that, as Christians, we're really in grace's grip. Soon enough, we'll be standing strong! eXXit homepage Index of three-minute studies Copyright 2002 by eXXit *Scriptures are from The Holy Bible: New International Version, © Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. All rights reserved.