What are we to expect of the Christian life? Is it supposed to be a continual struggle against sin, with seemingly little or no victory until Jesus finally returns and fixes everything? Or, has the work of Christ so changed us that we are to experience a new kind of life that is nothing like the old life we lived before. Some view this passage as a description of the normal Christian life – but what a miserable and hopeless life that would be. Paul teaches that the Gospel has done and is doing so much more in the life of the true believer. Under the law we are forever trapped as a POW, but Christ came to deliver us – to rescue us from our captor and set us on a completely different course, not to be sinless, or without any struggle against sin, but a struggle that we can win because of the work He has done and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
