“I’m facing an uphill battle,” I said. He replied, “All battles are uphill. Downhill, it’s called a slide, a cake-walk, inevitable, or gravity.”

He was a WWII vet and I think he knew what he was talking about. It’s also a good picture of what today’s Scriptures (Romans 7:13-25) are saying.

I personally find today’s Scriptures among the most encouraging passages in the whole Bible. For those of us who fight perfectionism at every turn and who desire to live impeccable lives, we hate the inevitable slide or gravity pulling us down from our desire to do what is right. Paul knew what it was like and had that same “Aaargh!” sentiment that many of us feel when we fall short of our desires. It’s a relief that I’m not alone in my struggle to fight the uphill battle and the frustration at failures that come with it.

If I died with Christ and am born again to live a life of holiness, then why is it so hard?  There’s a war going on until we go home to Jesus or He returns to us. The warring factions, ironically, are both me!

On the spiritual side, this is the person I want to be, and the opposing side is sinful person I am by nature. Like gravity, the sinful nature constantly pulls me downhill. It’s easy to slip, to slide, to take the cake-walk rather than the hard road. Unchecked, I inevitably careen toward chaos.

For Paul, as a Jew, as for us today, the uphill battle to live a righteous life still leads to defeat. Yes, it’s hard work to fight the uphill battle. And for those of us who try and fail again and again, it could be cause for despair. This would remain the case if Act 1 of redemption history (the giving of the law) was all we had; if the sacred space was simply cordoned off as No Trespassing so that we were prevented from accessing it.

Romans 7:24 What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God– through Jesus Christ our Lord!

But it’s good to know that we have someone who has rescued us from this body of death: Jesus. He fought the uphill battle and won the decisive victory over sin and death. For those of us who try, but fail time and again, Jesus reassures us that–for Jew and Gentile—He died once for all of us. We can know that our fighting the uphill battle is worth it, and He offers forgiveness for the times we fail. That’s good news indeed!

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Give it up for Lent: Despair at surrendering to our sinful selves

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For further study:

1. To what extent was it even more frustrating for the Jews who had been given the Law?

2. Do you ever picture yourself as walking around in a body of death? How might it change your view of the condition of humanity and the promise of eternal life?

3. How does the picture of slavery to sin and slavery to God’s law leave the Jew with a “Catch-22” (they have been given the Law, but cannot keep it)? What is the way out for Jews and Gentiles alike? Give thanks to God that Jesus rescues us from impossible, uphill battles.

If you’ve ever been to a theme park, you’ve likely encountered rides marked with a sign that reads, “You must be this tall to ride.” 

I always wondered about that.  Let’s say someone was very tall for their age…or very short.  It’d be a disqualifier that you couldn’t do anything about.  One could hope that with age, we will grow in height.

But what if the sign was so tall that no one could reach it no matter how old they were or how tall they got?

That’s a picture of what today’s passage (Romans 7:1-13) is saying about the Mosaic Law.

The law is an impossibly high standard.  No matter how long we have been alive or how long we have been Christians or Jews, we will never be able to live up to that high standard.  We’re not up to the level needed to ride.  So we stand there looking at the sign and are acutely aware of being too small, falling too short.

What might be some of the reactions to the requirements?

• Cry because you couldn’t ride?
• Become angry at the requirement being impossible to attain?
• Feel frustration that no matter how hard you worked, it wasn’t good enough?
• Would you pass judgment on the ride, the standard, or the whole theme park as being worthless?
• Would you experience denial, insisting you are tall enough?
• Or maybe would it release your inner schemer: I’ll find a way around it?

I found that the very commandment that was intended to bring life actually brought death. For sin, seizing the opportunity afforded by the commandment, deceived me, and through the commandment put me to death.  So then, the law is holy, and the commandment is holy, righteous and good. (Romans 7: 10-12)

Considering the ride at the theme park, the sign is there as a positive to permit me to ride, but instead it is negative in that it points out that I am deficient and unable.  If the sign wasn’t there, I wouldn’t know I couldn’t ride until boarding time when I’d be passed over for not measuring up because the standard is the standard.  Likewise, the law is there to show me what it takes to live with holiness, and what do I see?  My deficiency and inability to live with holiness.  It’s not the law’s fault.  It’s the way things are.

I am deficient not because there was a sign pointing it out, but the sign clearly shows the impossibly high standard that I am unable on my own to satisfy.  For the Jews of Paul’s day, they wanted to believe that they received the law as a positive to give them a ticket to heaven.  But the law stood as a reminder that they could never measure up.  It is an Impossibly High Standard.

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Give it up for Lent: Striving for the impossible and resisting God’s solution

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For further study:

1. What is your reaction to the impossibly high standard of the law?
2. Consider Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”  Unlike the theme park where the sign prevents you from riding, what did Jesus do to allow us to experience eternal life?
3. Read Colossians 2:13-15.  What did Jesus do with the impossibly high standard?
4. If we died with Christ, how is our relationship to the law like Paul’s example from marriage in Romans 7:1-3?

Have you ever resigned from one job and taken another?  If so, you will understand today’s analogy.

Let’s say the new job offered you better pay, a nicer boss, and greater job security, would you even consider going back to work for the bad boss who stressed you out, threatened to fire you all the time—all for a job in which you were constantly abused?  Even after you started your new job, if your old bad boss called you on the phone and threatened to make your life miserable if you didn’t come back, would you leave the good job and go back to the bad one?

This is the argument that the Apostle Paul is making in today’s passage (Romans 6:12-23).

He says you previously had a bad job.  Your boss was Satan.  Your cubicle was a filthy, foul place.  Your job description included sinning, doing all kinds of bad things to yourself and others, and at the end of the end of your work week, you had a paycheck that was nothing but death.   Your coworkers were the Grim Reaper, Satan’s henchmen, and probably a few evil clowns.  Clowns can be creepy.

But now, look!  You resigned from that job. 

You’re never going back.  Good for you! 

Your new boss is God.  Your office is clean. Your job description is to serve Him; do good stuff; and obey His wise instructions.  He cares about you and your welfare.  It’s Friday and you and all your coworkers get paid for the random and planned acts of kindness that God paved the way for you to do.

 Your paycheck? Wow! Righteousness and holiness!

But then in your envelope, you see it: God gave you a wonderful bonus that you didn’t (and couldn’t) earn.  It’s eternal life and it starts right now and continues forever.   

So would you really take the gift of God’s presence and favor and trade it for being Satan’s whipping boy all over again? (I didn’t think so).  You might hear Satan calling like the telemarketer from Hell trying to sell you on his brand of relationship saying, “Come back, I’ll make you a deal.”  But you can say like the Dave Edmunds song,

“You better get back to your use-to-be
‘Cause your kind of love ain’t good for me
I hear you knockin’
But you can’t come in
I hear you knockin’
Go back where you’ve been

Romans 6:23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

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Give it up for Lent: Looking back, longing for the sinful days to return

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For further study:

1. How is it that you resign from the bad job of sinning?
2. What does God’s job application process entail?  Is this job something you deserve or earn?
3. Read James 4:1-10.  What does this say about how to get rid of the old boss?

If there was a “Wanted” poster for Christians, it’d read, “Wanted: Dead and Alive.” 

How is that possible?–you ask–to be both dead and alive?”

“Because of Jesus” would be my reply.  For the Christian, it is possible to be simultaneously dead and alive.

What are we dead to?  Because of Jesus, we are dead to the old body of sin and our slavery to it.

What are we alive to?  Because of Jesus, we are alive to experience life as it was meant to be lived: free from sin and free to worship God.

That’s what today’s passage (Romans 6:1-11) is all about.  It’s a life-and-death matter, wrapped up in the idea of baptism.  Why baptism?  It is an outward physical sign of washing with water to indicate the inward spiritual change of being cleansed from sin.

The Dead and Alive argument goes: if we are dead to the things of this world, we aren’t under the thumb of sin anymore.  How could we be?  What can dead people do?  Jesus died for our sins and when we believe Him, it’s like we died along with Him.

But because He is alive, we’re also alive again!  It’s like we’ve been given a whole new life—free from needing to obey what jeopardized us in our former way of living.  We obey Christ and have new life because that’s what He gives us.  His Holy Spirit indwells us as new creations!  Perhaps now might be a good time to insert the words Born Again, although some argue that there’s never a good time for those words—they’re far too polarizing to ever be spoken.

If I died to the old master of sin, and I am alive to serve the new Master, Jesus Christ, why is sin still a struggle?  It’s part of the already-not-yet of being already born again in a world that has not yet been renewed.

Let’s face it: Born Again Christians don’t fit in.  Christians are Wanted men and women who are wanted by God to be following Christ, crucified with Him and born again by Him.  We’re wanted but also waiting for the new creation fit for those Born Again, Christians who are Wanted: Dead and Alive.

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Give it up for Lent: Being ashamed of being Born Again; Contentment with dead priorities

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For further study, read John 3:1-21.

1. What does Jesus say here about being dead physically and alive spiritually? 
2. If there’s a sin issue you struggle with, how might considering it dead help you to let go of it? 
3. How might considering yourself to have died to the things of this world by being crucified with Christ help you to live as a person who is born again?
4. What do you think is at the root of the words born again being turned into a pejorative term?

In the movie, Baby Mama, Tina Fey’s character, Kate Holbrook, is investigating surrogacy with Chaffee Bicknell,

Chaffee Bicknell: Our surrogacy fee is $100,000.  

Kate Holbrook: It costs more to have someone born than to have someone killed!  

Chaffee Bicknell: It takes longer.

Interesting, isn’t it, that a throwaway humor line can carry such truth?

Today’s lesson comes from Romans 5:12-21 and contrasts the legacy of Adam (sin and death) with the work of Christ (righteousness and life). Giving ourselves a legacy of death cost little compared to the immeasurably high cost of giving us life again.

In Genesis 6:5-7, we read this sad statement:

The LORD saw how great man’s wickedness on the earth had become, and that every inclination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil all the time. The LORD was grieved that he had made man on the earth, and his heart was filled with pain. So the LORD said, “I will wipe mankind, whom I have created, from the face of the earth– men and animals, and creatures that move along the ground, and birds of the air– for I am grieved that I have made them.”

Adam’s legacy reflected wickedness–amplified with each generation–as we carried not only the pollutant of Adam’s sin in our nature, but we also added to it by rebellious acts of our own.  Every inclination…only evil…all the time—that, my friends, is what Adam accomplished with his human work of rebellion.

Even a flood couldn’t wash our nature clean.  But it did buy humanity some time.

Paul offers this contrast between Adam and Jesus Christ: 

“Again, the gift of God is not like the result of the one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification.  For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.  Consequently, just as the result of one trespass was condemnation for all men, so also the result of one act of righteousness was justification that brings life for all men.  For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.” (Romans 5:16-19, NIV)

In one foolish moment in the Garden of Eden, death arrived and it has infected every human being ever since.  But in one glorious moment on the Cross, death was conquered and Jesus’ death provided a cure for human sin that brings believers to eternal life.  Death could limit mortal life, cutting it short.  But Jesus showed us that while it costs more and it takes longer to give someone eternal life, this gift of His righteousness far surpasses the death and stain of Adam’s sin.  Bringing life to God’s people Costs More, Takes Longer, but it Lasts Forever.

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Give it up for Lent: Short-term thinking about eternity

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For futher study:

1.  Have you ever thought that you might have done things differently than Adam and Eve?  How does the eternal work of Christ display God’s love far more than any individual, day-by-day decision that Adam and Eve could have made?
2. In The Pursuit of God by A.W. Tozer, he writes “‘Return, ye children of men’ (Psalm 90:3) was the word spoken at the Fall by which God decreed the death of every man, and no added word has He needed to speak.  The sad procession of mankind across the face of the earth from birth to the grave is proof that His original word was enough.”  If God isn’t real and if Adam didn’t sin, resulting in his death, how do we explain how this earth is populated by things that are in the process of dying?
3. God promised He would never again flood the earth (Genesis 9:11).  Jesus was never “Plan B.”  Why did God destroy the earth once by a flood if Jesus was coming?  Read Matthew 24:38-44.  How does it set a pattern for faith?