spiritual condition vs. rule follower

Reading Romans 7, and then Matthew Henry’s commentary, I found that Paul, when he was a Pharisee, was ignorant of the spirituality of the law. In other words, the law was something to just live by, a code of conduct, set of rules. If you were a good Jew, you broke no laws. In my opinion this is where so many churchgoers live. Unaware that the laws, the codes, the restraints (whether perceived or real) are there to make our spirits aware of our inward condition, depravity.

The laws that Paul lived by DID point to that inward condition. That is why it is just as much a sin to covet as it was to steal, or to lust as it was to commit adultery.

Outwardly so many of us can look like Johnny Churchgoer, breaking none of the perceived and sometimes extra-biblical laws of the church. And yet on the inside be depraved. “Yeah I don’t drink, dance, swear, or smoke…..but inside…I constantly lust, covet, am jealous, I gossip, I’m devisive and I still teach Sunday School and am a deacon.”

I say, have a beer and a Cuban (pre-embargo), let a few words fly and clean up the inside. Which is worse….what is outside or what is inside? I can almost guarantee you that the struggles Paul talked about weren’t the outward sins…. I would bet that the things he did that he didn’t want to do…..were inward things that no one really knew about. I bet, as a Pharisee, he was pretty good at living outwardly…according to the rules. Jesus admonished the Pharisees constantly about being whitewashed tombs….the outsides ‘looked’ good and inside were rotting corpses. Clean up the dark closets few know about and live within Grace.

God thank for your law. Thank you for Paul’s example of spiritual struggles. I can so relate to his struggles between the sinful nature and the mind. Please protect my heart and my mind. I am already so depraved…..yet I want to be more like you.