Romans 7:16. For what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
This is the believer’s riddle. To say that this is not a believer’s experience is to prove that the man who says it does not know much about how believers feel. We hate sin, and yet, alas! alas! we fall into it! We would live perfect lives if we could, we that are renewed. We make no justification for our sin: it is evil and abominable; yet do we find these two things warring and fighting within.
Romans 7:16. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
My inmost heart, says the law, is good, though I have not kept it as I wish I had, yet my very wish to keep it is the consent of my nature to goodness of that law, and proves that there is a vitality about me which will yet throw out the disease, and make me right in the sight of God.
Romans 7:16. For what I would, that do I not; but what I hate, that do I.
This is the believer’s riddle. To say that this is not a believer’s experience is to prove that the man who says it does not know much about how believers feel. We hate sin, and yet, alas! alas! we fall into it! We would live perfect lives if we could, we that are renewed. We make no justification for our sin: it is evil and abominable; yet do we find these two things warring and fighting within.
Romans 7:16. If then I do that which I would not, I consent unto the law that it is good.
My inmost heart, says the law, is good, though I have not kept it as I wish I had, yet my very wish to keep it is the consent of my nature to goodness of that law, and proves that there is a vitality about me which will yet throw out the disease, and make me right in the sight of God.