The War Inside

The War Raging Within

Romans 7:22-23 "For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man, 
23 but I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members."

Notice all the players in this scripture. You have all three parts of your being illustrated here. Your spirit, which Paul refers to as the "inner man", your soul, which here is referred to as "the mind", and finally your body. On the one side you have your spirit which is very close to God. Your spirit is always urging you to commune with Him and be one with Him. On the other side you have your flesh which is subject to the law of sin; it is always trying to get you to gratify the flesh and carnal nature of who you are. In the middle of this tug-of-war is your soul. Your soul is the part of you that has to decide which route will be taken. 

Here we understand that our spirit joyfully wants to do the will of God. The issue is that our flesh is weak. So, how do we defeat this? Paul writes it this way in Romans 24 and 25.
"Who will set me free from the body of this death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord!"

A practical answer to this question is found simply in the wording. It is a decision we make. The fact that the soul is referred to here as the mind, lets us know that it is something that must be intentional on our part.  When you sin, it is intentional. You make a conscious decision to do it. (That is not to say that being sin free is easy, it certainly is not as we learn earlier in chapter 7 when Paul says "the things that I shouldn't do I do, and the things that I should do I don't do." ) Therefore, the decision must be intentional not to sin. We must, with great EFFORT and PLANNING, decide to live righteously. We must intentionally live as sin free as we possibly can. The decision must be made by us to incline toward the urging of our inner man, and God.

I love you, and I am praying for you to listen to your spirit, and not your flesh.

~Pastor Erroyl
SALT