July 9, 2023
Romans 7:15-25
The key to our salvation, the thing that makes us right before God is not ignoring our Sin – out of sight, out of mind – or ignoring our need for a divine intervention. The key to our salvation is that in spite of our inability to follow God’s top-ten, which Jesus distilled into two things – love God and love one another – God's grace is ours. God’s grace frees us from the necessity of finding our identity in our good deeds. God’s grace frees us from our sins defining who we are. Because in God’s grace we find a new identity: beloved, transformed, sanctified.
In verse 24 Paul asks “who will deliver me” from my Sin?
The short answer? Jesus.
The long answer? Jesus. The One who took the weight of the Sin of the world upon himself, to the point of death. But who then, three days after being placed in a borrowed grave, left his burial clothes behind, neatly folded in the tomb, and walked out.
God’s grace delivers us just as we are, sin and all. Then when we say, “I’m not OK. You’re not OK,” God replies, “And that’s OK.”
Because we are forgiven and free from our Sin, the Church is the Herold of this Good News. Week after week, the urgency of our proclamation replaces judgment and condemnation with Good News. “For God so loved the world,” that we are free. God has done for us that which we cannot do for ourselves, and that is to love you and me just as we are – sin and all.
