"It is no more I that do it, but sin that dwelleth in me":
that is the language of a BornAgin man, a man who knows that his heart and nature have been renewed, and that sin is now a power in him that is not himself.
"I delight in the law of the Lord after the inward man"
This regenerate man tells us:
"I will to do what is good, but the power to perform I find not."
The will of the creature is nothing but an empty vessel in which the power of God is to be made manifest.
God teaches man his impotence
Rom. 7:6-25
The man is wrestling and struggling to fulfill God's law. It is the regenerate I in its impotence seeking to obey the law without being filled with the Spirit.
God allows that failure that the regenerate man should be taught his own utter impotence. It is in the course of this struggle that there comes to us this sense of our utter sinfulness. It is God's way of dealing with us. He allows that man to strive to fulfill the law that, as he strives and wrestles, he may be brought to this:
"I am a regenerate child of God, but I am utterly helpless to obey His law."
"O wretched man that I am! Who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" This believer who bows here in deep contrition is utterly unable to obey the law of God.
Not only is the man who makes this confession a regenerate and an impotent man, but he is also a wretched man. He is utterly unhappy and miserable and what is it that makes him so utterly miserable?
Blessed be God when a man learns to say:
"O wretched man that I am!" from the depth of his heart.
He is on the way to the eighth chapter of Romans.
Wrong thoughts about this passage
There are many who make this confession a pillow for sin. They say that Paul had to confess his weakness and helplessness in this way, what are they that they should try to do better? So the call to holiness is quietly set aside. Would God that every one of us had learned to say these words in the very spirit in which they are written here! When we hear sin spoken of as the abominable thing that God hates, do not many of us wince before the word?
Would that all Christians who go on sinning and sinning would take this verse to heart. If ever you utter a sharp word say: "O wretched man that I am!" And every time you lose your temper, kneel down and understand that it never was meant by God that this was to be the state in which His child should remain.
Why should you say this whenever you commit sin?
Because it is when a man is brought to this confession that deliverance is at hand.
And remember it was not only the sense of being impotent and taken captive that made him wretched, but it was above all the sense of sinning against his God.
The law was doing its work, making sin exceeding sinful in his sight.
But when once every sin gives new intensity to the sense of wretchedness, and we feel our whole state as one of not only helplessness, but actual exceeding sinfulness, we shall be pressed not only to ask: "Who shall deliver us?" but to cry: "I thank God through Jesus Christ my Lord."
"If ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live." That is the body of death from which he is seeking deliverance.
The law of the Spirit
"The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death." That is the deliverance through Jesus Christ our Lord; the liberty to the captive which the Spirit brings. Can you keep captive any longer a man made free by the "law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus"?
But you say, the regenerate man, had not he the Spirit of Jesus when he spoke in the Romans sixth chapter? Yes, but he did not know what the Holy Spirit could do for him.
How does power of the Holy Spirit work?
God does not work by His Spirit as He works by a blind force in nature. He leads His people on as reasonable, intelligent beings, and therefore when He wants to give us that Holy Spirit whom He has promised, He brings us first to the end of self, to the conviction that though we have been striving to obey the law, we have failed. When we have come to the end of that, then He shows us that in the Holy Spirit we have the power of obedience, the power of victory, and the power of real holiness.
What many Christians misunderstand
God works to will, and He is ready to work to do, but, alas! Many Christians misunderstand this. They think because they have the will, it is enough, and that now they are able to do. This is not so. The new will is a permanent gift, an attribute of the new nature.
The power to do is not a permanent gift, but must be each moment received from the Holy Spirit. It is the man who is conscious of his own impotence as a believer who will learn that by the Holy Spirit he can live a holy life. This man is on the brink of that great deliverance, the way has been prepared for the glorious Romans eighth chapter.
Where are you living?
Is it with you, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me?" with now and then a little experience of the power of the Holy Spirit?
or is it:
"I thank God through Jesus Christ! The law of the Spirit hath set me free from the law of sin and of death"?
The Spirit is within carnal Christians, but the flesh rules the life.
To be led by the Spirit of God is what they need. Would God that I could make every child of His realize what it means that the everlasting God has given His dear Son, Christ Jesus, to watch over you every day, and that what you have to do is to trust and that the work of the Holy Spirit is to enable you every moment to remember Jesus, and to trust Him!
The Spirit has come to keep the link with Him unbroken every moment. Praise God for the Holy Spirit!
Who have Holy Spirit ?
We are so accustomed to think of the Holy Spirit as a luxury, for special times, or for special ministers and men. But the Holy Spirit is necessary for every believer, every moment of the day.
Praise God you have Him, and that He gives you the full experience of the deliverance in Christ, as He makes you free from the power of sin.
Who longs to have the power and the liberty of the Holy Spirit?
Oh, brother, bow before God in one final cry of despair:
"O God, must I go on sinning this way forever? Who shall deliver me, O wretched man that I am! from the body of this death?"
Are you ready to sink before God in that cry and seek the power of Jesus to dwell and work in you? Are you ready to say:
"I thank God through Jesus Christ"?
What good does it do that we go to church or attend conventions, that we study our Bibles and pray, unless our lives are filled with the Holy Spirit?
There is deliverance, there is the liberty of the Holy Spirit. The kingdom of God is "joy in the Holy Spirit.
Source: Absolute Surrender and Other Addresses
by Andrew Murray
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