[This reflection was published in the weekly news bulletin of Horley Baptist Church, 19/Jul/2020]
I’ve been unable to shake off what Martin said recently about the ‘lazy’ servant in Matthew 25 v 26. And what I’ve been led to is a reading (and re-reading) of the above chapters of Romans in several versions.
I think you’ll find that Paul is doing more than expounding the issue of Jewish law vs God’s grace. He is profoundly exploring his, and our, personal battle with sin. Pushing aside any consideration of individual ‘sins’ he is insisting that in each of us there is a deep-rooted, persistent drive which unfailingly fouls up even our most determined efforts to do good, to live up to God’s ‘laws’. It’s our indwelling ‘sinful nature’.
Why have these chapters been bugging me? Because, in me at least, is a lifelong laziness! Martin has been challenging me (us!) to see church and our individual lives transformed. In myself, I don’t have enough strength to begin to shift 80 years of ground-in habit so as to become a new person. And that’s Paul’s point exactly! It’s only the life of Jesus’s Holy Spirit in me that can and WILL transform me.
If we are indeed a living organism, a body having Jesus’s DNA, He – as He promised – will grow His church, feeding, watering, pruning as it becomes what He will make it.
But my resistance to His ways is much stronger than I like to admit. I’m lazy. “I can will what is right, but I cannot do it” (Romans 7 v 18). I need the encouragement, grace, and prodding which you can give me.
Let’s run with all we’ve got (1Cor 9 v 24 -27) and feel His wind in our sails!
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Contributed by Dennis Ginter; © the Author
