Romans 7: God in the Struggle

The apostle Paul is not the person you would expect to admit to his struggles with sin. He was the leading evangelist of the early church, wrote numerous New Testament letters, and was seen as the leader of Christianity to the non-Jewish world in his time. Yet he continued to struggle with evil. He wrote:

²¹ So I find this law at work: Although I want to do good, evil is right there with me. ²² For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; ²³ but I see another law at work in me, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within me. ²⁴ What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death? ²⁵ Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!

Notice the progression: He wanted to do good; evil still existed. The power to overcome evil came from Christ, not the removal of evil.

In another place, the New Testament notes that in this world you will have trouble. Christ does not change our life and remove evil from our existence. Christ changes our lives so we can overcome the struggle with evil and help others along the way.

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UPDATE: It’s official: I’ve completed handwriting the New Testament! Sometime yesterday, I finished the last verse of Revelation (“Amen.”), pausing to thank God for his grace.

Now, after much consideration, I will continue by taking on the Old Testament. On the downside, the Old Testament makes up nearly three-fourths of the Bible, so I have over 900 chapters to go (of 1,189 total in the Bible). On the positive side, I’ve completed all 260 chapters of the New Testament in half the time I expected (only six months). If I can keep up the pace, I’ll be done with the whole thing by the end of 2012, only 18 months from now.

Please pray I can keep up the pace and that God would use this little project to make a big difference in my life and the lives of others. Thank you again to the team at Patheos.com for hosting the Holy Writ Project and for all of you who have read, shared, prayed, and encouraged along the way.

Grace and peace,

Dillon

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Dillon Burroughs is the author or co-author of numerous books and is handwriting a copy of all 31,173 verses of the Bible at HolyWritProject.com. Find out more about Dillon at Facebook.com/readdB or readdB.com.