The game was a nightmare.
It was as if the teams were uncertain of their purposes.
And amazingly, without any clear rules, both team’s offenses and defenses were like bumper cars, four units simultaneously trying to score and attempting to stop all scoring. Two wildly flailing teams of two offenses and two defenses in a maddening melee.
One quarterback was trying to hand-off to his fullback one way, while his own team’s cornerback was hoping to take it from his hands from the other direction.
On the sidelines, in lieu of cheerleaders, synchronized contortionists shaped themselves into pretzels.
Scripture can be mishandled like that.
Try to explain everything from one direction, as pastors try to do with the book of James, while excluding what they don’t understand from Paul.
“(14) But everyone is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own desire, and enticed. (15) Then when desire has conceived, it bears sin: and sin, when it is finished, bears death.” James 1:14-15.
There is no qualifier for an evil desire in the Greek, that would inherently indicate a sinful nature in this verse. The Greek word translated desire is the same one that describes Jesus’ desire to eat the last supper with His disciples. It also applies to Paul’s desire to depart and be with the Lord. If there was already a sinful spirit with a sinful nature implied in this verse, it would not have needed to be tempted to evil. An evil, sinful nature self has no need of tempting. It naturally does what its name implies: it sins.
So what’s the point?
When we run off and leave out Paul, we make many conclusions that only confuse and stymie us.
What would Paul offer, you might ask?
Romans 6 has three major points: we’re dead to sin (v2,7,11), freed from it (7,18,22), and no longer have to yield to it (13,16,19).
“But that conflicts with what I thought James was saying!” a pastor might say.
Yes.
Romans 8: you’re no longer in the flesh, you’re alive in the spirit.
“But that conflicts …”
Yes.
“Ah,” but the pastor might say, “Paul, the super-apostle, could’t live the Christian life either, so God cannot expect anything but failure from us!”
Here is what is actually going on in Romans 7.
If we don’t know what we’re doing, we mix law and grace, confuse ourselves and everyone else, root ourselves in addictive behaviors, have tenuous or failing marriages, and lose the culture.
All are true of the church today. We’re doing badly.
Why?
Because we’ve mixed law and grace.
We’re mostly walking by law, the default for every person in the world – external rules and performance.
Romans 7 is the description of a person living by The Law. It’s disastrous and plagued with misery. You can describe it with a formula: man + Law = sin & death.
However if we walk and are led by the Spirit and put on Christ, we’ll no longer stumble over the trip-wire of Law.
The premise for overcoming is the indwelling Godhead, the primary message Christ gave to Paul.
This free eBook unscrambles the mess we’ve made by mixing law and grace.
Free in Christ 