Your kind words are greatly appreciated and encourage me to continue. That is the real aim of this website: to make a difference for Christ and his Kingdom. It is great to know that in a small way I can contribute toward that end.

Blessings,
Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

For too long I (and perhaps others) have tolerated a 2-faced Christianity which separates the public and the private. God used your words to bring me to repentance and align me to his Holy will. I emailed the address of your blog to other young adults in my church and God has used it to touch many other lives.

Nathan Clarke

Thanks for that. Morris and Packer… man, I’ve got some work to do to dismiss then, now don’t I?!?!

*wink*

Alister Cameron // Blogologist

Yes it is always a tricky issue. On the one hand, we are all sinners and are all capable of great sin. On the other hand, we have the ability, with God’s help, to be real overcomers. But we live between the ages: the old age of sin and death is still upon us, but the new age of freedom in Christ has broken in, but will not be fully realised until he comes again. So we will always live with this tension, and there will be struggles between the old and the new.

As to Romans 7, it is indeed a difficultly chapter to interpret, especially the identity of the “I” in 7: 13-25. The truth is, scholars are pretty evenly divided on this one, with good arguments to be found on both sides. Those who believe Paul is talking about himself as a believer here include Calvin, Luther, Barrett, Morris and Packer. Those who argue for a pre-Christian experience include Bultmann, Ridderbos, Hoekema and Fee.

So it is not fully clear cut as to how we should run with this passage. Personal experience should not determine the issue, but nonetheless, those who more readly fit into a victorious life type of camp (such as Fee) will side with the pre-Christian view, while others who seem to struggle more may side with the Christian view.

But whatever view one holds to, Paul comes to our rescue in Romans 8 with the good news of what we have and are in Christ.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

As I believe Dr Tom Constable is saying in his commentary on Romans, although there are specific and spectacular sins that need to be confessed, I am certain that there are numberless locked closets deep within the recesses of my own soul, related to craftiness and pride, which have yet to be opened and surrendered to the Holy Spirit. http://www.soniclight.com/constable/notes/pdf/romans.pdf ((scroll down to chapter 7)

I believe that one of the tactics of the enemy, like the hunting lion, is to cut us out and isolate us. He would make us feel that it is only us who are either being tempted or only us who fall. (Psalm 73). Certainly if we persist in sin, we are tempting God and there may well come a point where the ability to feel guilt and the ability to repent, are no longer possible. All grace has been used up. Chapters 4 and 10 of Hebrews make for very sober reading.

We certainly need to expose sin but when we expose it in others, as the thief hanging on one side of the cross of Jesus, did to the one hanging on the other side, we need to humbly recognise that there is only one person in all of history who was innocent and that was Jesus Christ.

David Skinner, UK

Romans 7 fits nowhere into this!

In that passage Paul is speaking in the voice of an unregenerate Jew who has not yet found Christ. It is an oft-misunderstood chapter.

If you carefully re-read it again in the wider context of chs 6-8 you should be able to see clearly where his argument is going.

Paul knows nothing of a terminal battle in the human breast where the “flesh” is proven to be at least as powerful a force as the “new man”, as the redemptive work of the Holy Spirit.

We are to be holy, as He is holy. There is no sin we cannot overcome, although we will never get there in this life. But to suggest (I’m not sure you were) that Romans 7 explains and somehow exonerated the Todds and Mikes of this world is simply wrong.

Christians have in Christ, by the Holy Spirit, access to the same power which raised Jesus from the dead, to overcome sin, such that there would be no condemnation, and no sin that we cannot be freed from.

That is NOT the Paul speaking in ch 7, where he’s voicing the hopelessness of someone who cannot escape, until Christ appears to them.

I hope that’s clear

Alister Cameron // Blogologist

We all sin and fall short of the glory of God.

I think the most appropriate response to these events is to look at ourselves again without our rosy tinted glasses and let this remind us that we all fail, we all have sinned. Then look back to God and see a fresh how amazing is His grace given our falleness.. I think this is fresh potential to see again how incredible is all that God has done for us. I think it’s that appreciation of His grace and love that is going to be transformative in terms of building that integrity you speak about.

Rebecca New