Today’s 333 Devotional: “Saved But Still Wretched”

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” (Romans 7:24)

Notice, Paul didn’t say, “What a wretched man I was,” but “What a wretched man I am.”

Paul never said that is how he used to be, but not that way any longer. No, because that would make him a liar according to the Apostle John. “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” (1 John 1:8)

Instead, earlier Paul said “For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want to do, it is no longer I who do it, but it is sin living in me that does it.” (Romans 7:19-20)

Paul also said that “This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.” (1 Timothy 1:15)

Again, note that Paul wasn’t talking in the past tense, but the present. Not it wasn’t “of whom I was chief,” but “of whom I am chief.”But what we see from Paul’s life as a believer is that his sinful behavior didn’t represent who he really was, but rather that his sinful behavior was now just a brief bout of insanity left over from his sinful desire.

This then applies to us as believers. When we find ourselves caught up in sinful thinking and behavior, it’s not who we really are, but instead it is a brief bout if insanity brought about by our sinful DNA.

Therefore, let us be forever grateful for God’s grace and mercy through Jesus’s death and the forgiveness of our sin that He offers. Or as Paul ends by saying, “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!” (Romans 7:25a)