JOn..perhaps you have romans 7 wrong:
The Christian in Romans 7 / Arthur W. Pink (1886-1952) |
The one who bows to the solemn and searching teaching of God’s Word, the one who there learns the awful wreckage which sin has wrought in the human constitution, the one who sees the exalted standard of holiness which God has set before us, cannot fail to discover what a vile wretch he is. If he is given to behold how far short he falls of attaining to God’s standard; if, in the light of the divine sanctuary, he discovers how little he resembles the Christ of God; then will he find this language most suited to express his godly sorrow. If God reveals to him the coldness of his love, the pride of his heart, the wanderings of his mind, the evil that defiles his godliest acts, he will cry, “0 wretched man that I am.” If he is conscious of his ingratitude, of how little he appreciates God’s daily mercies; if he marks the absence of that deep and genuine fervor which ought ever to characterize his praise and worship of that One who is “glorious in holiness;” if he recognizes that sinful spirit of rebellion, which so often causes him to murmur or at least chafe against the dispensations of God in his daily life; if he attempts to tabulate not only the sins of commission but the sins of omission, of which he is daily guilty, he will indeed cry, “O wretched man that I am.”
“But,” inquires someone, “does not communion with Christ produce rejoicing rather than mourning?” We answer, It produces both. It did with Paul. In v. 22 of our chapter he says, “I delight in the law of God.” Yet only two verses later he ci-ies, “0 wretched man that I am!” Nor does this passage stand alone. In 2 Cor. 6 the same apostle says, “As solTowful, yet always rejoicing” (v. 10). Sorrowful because of his failures, because of his daily sins. Rejoicing because of the grace which still bore with him, and because of the blessed provision which God has made even for the sins of His saints. So again in Roim 8:1 after declaring, “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” and after saying, “The Spirit Himself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ” (vv. 16-17); the apostle adds, “But ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” (v. 23) Similar is the teaching of the apostle Peter, “Wherein ye greatly rejoice, though now for a season, if need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold temptations” (1 Pet. 1:6). Sorrow and groaning, then, are not absent from the highest spirituality.