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“For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.” – Romans 7:19-25
“Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.” – Hebrews 4:16
The Christian life is one besieged with sin (James 3:2). And while we seek ever-deepening freedom in Christ, we understand that our imperfect and rebellious selves war against our own desires to be holy. When we sin, we must not treat it as a small, inevitable, or unimportant thing. We must make war on it by the power of the Holy Spirit. A crucial part of this fight against the evil that dwells within us is to constantly acknowledge our need to repent before God. We are saved in the sacrifice of Christ on our behalf. We are born again. But we are still afflicted. And we must always seek to keep short accounts of our misdeeds with our King. Sin that goes unacknowledged and uncontested can only lead to places we’d rather not go (James 1:15). And so the battle rages. We fight it by continually turning from ourselves, our inclinations, and our behaviors back towards the One who gave Himself to make us whole. Never stop repenting.
