NT Doctrine — Romans 7-8

Paul begins Chapter 7 explaining that the Law is binding on mortal flesh, not our spirits. He uses the symbolism of a wife; once her husband dies, she is no longer bound to him. But in Christ, it is we who have died. He calls us to nail our fleshly natures to His Cross so that we walk free to serve Him.

Part of the Curse of the Fall is that our fleshly nature cannot respond to the urgings of the Law. All it gets from the Law is a guide on how to sin more completely. Does that make the Law evil? Not at all. It’s the flesh that is evil. It sees the law code and awakens all manner of evil desires to transgress God’s boundaries. The flesh wants to drag us off to Hell, but the Law wants to awaken in us a need for redemption.

The fleshly nature is utterly perverse. It’s at war with our hearts, for the Law also awakens a moral awareness, making us long for redemption, but our flesh overwhelms that. What a horrible situation! How can we escape? It’s through Jesus Christ.

The next chapter leads off with the declaration that the Holy Spirit of Christ is the key. His divine Presence and power in us put the death sentence on the fleshly nature. His righteousness marks us out for redemption.

For us, the battle then is to reorient our conscious awareness. We must embrace the spiritual outlook supplied by the Holy Spirit. This begins the lifelong process of killing off the fleshly nature. We reclaim our human existence here as territory to be won in battle against our fleshly nature. This puts us at peace with our Creator, as our spirits cry out to Him as Father.

Our fleshly natures are part of the created world we are supposed to manage on behalf of the Creator. Instead, we are stuck within this world and cannot manage it, so it is subjected to chaos. Like the rest of Creation, we cry out for redemption. It grants us a vision of enduring this travail because we can see His Day coming.

Indeed, we don’t even really know how to pray for victory, but the gift of the Holy Spirit includes a voice that God can hear. On our end, that divine Presence reassures us that everything in on track, despite how awful it appears to us in our limited fleshly existence. We were chosen before Creation, so we know He will make everything happen as it should.

No agency in all of Creation can break our election, and God does not contradict Himself. We can rest assured that physical death is actually our ally, and we are eager to get it over with, but in God’s good time.