“O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin.” – Romans 7:24-25
THE HUMAN HEART IS by nature prone to evil and averse to good. It is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked (Jeremiah 9:17). But what else could be expected, when the men to whom these hearts belong have all sinned and come short of the glory of God? What else could be expected, when these men were shapen in iniquity and conceived in sin (Psalm 51:5)? There is none righteous, no, not one (Romans 3:10). The finest works which man can produce are but filthy rags in the Almighty’s sight (Isaiah 64:6), wholly incapable of justifying him before God. Those saturated with sin cannot save themselves from the wrath to come which their iniquity has incurred. They, in reflecting upon the odious sinfulness inherent to the creature man, can but rue with the apostle, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?”
Unpleasant as this universal predicament may be, God has deigned to provide we undeserving sons of men with a means of escaping the everlasting fire of hell. In my text verse, the apostle thanks God through Jesus Christ our Lord, because it is by the blood of Christ that he – and all who are redeemed – was ransomed from that place of torment where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched. If you wish to avoid the lake of fire, then you must first acknowledge you are a sinner – not merely a flawed individual, or an imperfect person, but a sinner. And as a sinner, you are utterly incapable of earning the perfect righteousness necessary to go to heaven.
Such is why Christ Jesus came into the world. Though he was in all points tempted like as we are, he was yet without sin, and was thus the only one ever qualified to pay the world’s debt of sin. He gave himself on the cross and shed his blood to pay that debt, was buried, and was bodily resurrected three days later unto the justification of those who believe on him. And if you will simply believe this – that Christ died for your sins, was buried, and was bodily resurrected – as your only hope for heaven, you will be saved.
I pray that you do so. Yet, even if you do, you must not believe that you will lose your urge to sin. Even the apostle lamented the struggle which must persist between the old man and the new, between the flesh and the spirit. Every born-again Christian is simply a sinner who has been indwelt by the Holy Spirit; he is not otherwise different from the unregenerate man. Some may make great changes to their lives, but this not proof of salvation any more than a lack of changes is proof of a lack of salvation. It is not how we live that determines our eternal destiny, but whom we trust to take us to heaven. As the scripture soberly declares, “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him” (John 3:36).