Identity and the Divided Self | Romans 7:14-8:2
Brian Hedges | July 3, 2022
Let me invite you to turn in your Bibles this morning to Romans 7. We’re going to be reading Romans 7:14-8:2.
While you’re turning there, let me remind you that we are in a series called “Identity Crisis.” We have one more week left in the series after today, and in the course of this series we’ve been thinking about identity, and we’ve talked a bit about the contrast between a biblical understanding of identity and our identity in Christ with cultural understanding of identity, especially this cultural movement that we’ve called expressive individualism. It’s a modern way of conceiving identity where, essentially, a person constructs identity for themselves on the basis of the desires and feelings and perceptions in one’s own heart and their inner experience.
A few times in this series I have quoted Tim Keller, from his very helpful book Making Sense of God, and I want to allude to him again this morning and then quote him here in a moment. Tim Keller critiques this modern view of identity (expressive individualism) as being deeply incoherent, and he says it’s incoherent because when a person looks deep into their hearts to find desires, they’re certainly going to find all kinds of desires, but they’re going to discover that many of those desires contradict one another.
That means that it becomes very difficult and even impossible for someone to really come to a true sense of self and identity on the basis only of what they desire in their hearts. They may have different kinds of desires that come into conflict with one another, so that they’re not able to arrive at a coherent sense of self.
Keller does a little thought experiment that I thought was really helpful, and I want to share this with you. He said to imagine, first of all, an Anglo-Saxon warrior in Britain in A.D. 800. This would be a long time ago, almost in the ancient world, a very different culture, and you imagine this warrior, and he looks within himself and he sees two different impulses or desires.
One of those impulses is an impulse towards aggression and towards violence. He lives in a shame and honor culture. He is a warrior, after all, and so he’s very quick to draw the sword, he’s very quick to challenge someone to battle. Anytime his honor is questioned, anytime someone personally insults him or his family or his people, what does he do? He resorts to violence. That is applauded and approved in his culture. He is a warrior.
But consider that he also feels within his heart same-sex attraction, and in that culture it would have been frowned upon, would not have been approved of at all. So that desire he suppresses. He tries to put it away, and he essentially says, “That’s not who I am. I don’t want to be that.” He doesn’t want that desire, but he wants to lean into this impulse of aggression and violence. Those are contradictory impulses, and the culture approves of one and not of the other, so he leans into one instead of the other.
Now, flip the script and imagine a young man in the 21st century, in an American city, a western culture, and he has those same two impulses, and they’re both really strong. On the one hand, he identifies as someone with same-sex attraction, and by and large the culture approves of that, and people say, “Yes, that’s who you are. Be who you are.”
But let’s say he also feels these deep feelings and impulses of aggression and violence, but the culture tells him, “You have to suppress that. You have to deal with that. You need to get in therapy, find out why you have these violent impulses in your life.” That’s not accepted. That’s not approved of.
What you have in either case is you have someone who has exactly the same two desires in conflict with one another, but the two different cultures have a different perspective on those desires. Ultimately, it means in either case that the person can’t live simply by his or her desires, because those desires are contradictory.
After this thought experiment, Keller then says this, and I think this is very insightful. He says, “It’s an illusion to think identity is simply an expression of inward desires and feelings. You have many strong feelings, and in one sense they are all part of you, but just because they are there does not mean you must or can express them all. No one identifies with all strong inward desires; rather, we use some kind of filter, a set of beliefs and values, to sift through our hearts and determine which emotions and sensibilities we will value and incorporate into our core identity and which we will not.”
I think that’s very insightful and very helpful as we think about identity and we think about how to deal with the desires, the impulses in our hearts.
In the course of this series we’ve talked about a number of different things. We’ve looked at identity in terms of creation and what it means to be made in the image of God; we’ve talked about identity in terms of the fall, sin, and our idols, and how idolatry corrupts our hearts and shapes our identity in negative ways. For a number of weeks now we’ve been talking about our identity in Christ, a new identity that we receive through redemption, through salvation, and what it means to live in that identity and to maintain that identity.
Today, I want us to think about this issue of conflicting desires within the heart, the division in the self, because even as believers, if you’re a Christian this morning, this is something that we continue to deal with in our lives. I think all of us know the experience of having contradictory desires and impulses in our hearts, and we need to know how to deal with those and how identity plays into those desires.
The text we’re going to use this morning is Romans 7: 14-25, and then the first two verses in chapter 8. This is a complicated passage, it’s a very theological passage; I’m going to do my best to simplify and summarize as I go.
Understand this: Paul’s main point is not identity in this passage; he’s really talking about the law of God and the role of the law and the conflict that that brought about within him, and then how through the gospel we find freedom from that conflict. That’s the main thrust of the passage. But the things he says I think incidentally apply to identity, because he talks about this kind of division of desires within the heart, within the self, and then he shows how the gospel addresses that division to bring freedom and restoration. So I think the passage is helpful for us in thinking about identity. Let’s read it, beginning in Romans 7:14.
“For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me.
“So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
This is God’s word.
I want you to see three things from the passage:
1. The Division of the Self
2. The Reason for This Division
3. The Freedom the Gospel Brings
1. The Division of the Self
You’ve probably heard that statement from the famous Russian historian and novelist Alexander Solzhenitsyn. He said, “The line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.” You see that dividing line in the experience of Paul as he describes his experience here in Romans 7; this division between the good that he wants and the evil that he finds himself doing.
You see this especially in verses 15-19. There are several places where this division is very, very clear. He just expresses this divided heart, these two impulses within him, and the conflict within him.
Verse 15: “For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.”
Have you ever experienced that? Do you know what that is? You want to do what is good, but you find yourself doing the very thing that you don’t want to do. That’s what Paul says.
In the second half of verse 18 he says, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” He’s saying, “My reach exceeds my grasp. I try to do what is good, I make resolutions, I make vows; I’m trying to do what is good, but I can’t seem to accomplish the good that I want to do.”
Then verse 19, “For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing.”
You see what he’s saying? He’s saying there is this conflict within. There are these two contradictory impulses or desires; in fact, he calls them laws. He talks about the law that is in his mind and the law of sin that is in his members. There’s this conflict between the good he wants to do (the law in his mind) and the law of sin operating within him.
That’s really the heart of what’s going on here. It is this principle within of indwelling sin. He refers to this several times, in verses 17 and 20. He uses the phrase “sin that dwells within me.” In verse 23, “the law of sin that dwells within my members.” Then in verse 25 he simply calls it “the law of sin.”
Of course, this raises the question, who is Paul describing here? What is this experience, and whose experience is this? This is where the interpreters and the commentators debate quite a bit. Is Paul describing here the experience of a believer? Is this a Christian’s experience? Is he describing the experience of an unbeliever, a non-Christian? More specifically, is he describing here the experience of a non-Christian Jewish person who lives under the law and so has a love for the law of God but is not able to carry out and fulfill the law? Or is he describing here the experience of a Christian who’s living under the law and living under the power of the flesh and hasn’t really graduated into the Spirit-filled life? Those are some of the different options.
I would suggest to you that whatever we decide exegetically is the answer to that (and I have my own view), from the standpoint of personal experience we can all see ourselves in this passage. I think both Christians and non-Christians, when they look in this passage, can see themselves as if in a mirror. In fact, I do think that the arguments for the different views are so good that, at the end of the day, I’m not sure that it matters too much which view you land on.
Thomas Schreiner in his commentary suggests, “The arguments are so finely balanced because Paul doesn’t intend to distinguish believers from unbelievers.” He’s describing, rather, the human condition, and it’s a human condition to which we can all relate. So even non-Christians know what it is to experience this conflict between two different kinds of desires.
The poet Ovid said, “I see and approve the better things, but I pursue the worse.” Now, he wasn’t a Christian, he was a pagan; but he says, “I see better things, that I should do, but I find myself going after the worse things.”
Let me give you another example. Many of you know that I’ve written some books, and when I’m working on a book I will often pull out this little book by a guy named Stephen Pressfield, called The War of Art. It’s kind of a twist on the title The Art of War. This book is called The War of Art, and it’s a short little book, and it’s written for writers and creative people, to try to help them get over the hump of procrastination and all of the things that keep you from actually doing the hard creative work of writing a book. I’ve read this probably five or six times—I pull it out every couple of years—because it just names the problem that any creative person will face when they have a big task in front of them. He calls this problem “resistance,” and he says this resistance is essentially what keeps you from doing what you really want to do.
You really want to do this creative work, you really want to write this book or write a piece of music or whatever it is; but instead, you go shopping. Instead, you sleep in. Instead, you binge-watch TV. You do all kinds of things that self-sabotage, that keep you from doing the things that you want to do in the deepest part of your heart.
I read that and I think, That sounds just like Romans 7! It sounds just like indwelling sin. But Stephen Presfield is certainly not a Christian, but he’s naming something in the human condition that we can all relate to, and it is this principle within us of what the Bible calls sin, and it is a resistance to that which is good.
It’s certainly true in the life of the non-Christian, and even as believers, even after we have been set free from the ruling power of sin in our lives, we still know the ongoing conflict with sin, don’t we? If you’re a Christian, you’ve been set free from the dominion of sin. Romans 6 says that “sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law but under grace.” That means that the bondage to sin is broken; you are no longer a slave to sin.
But though you are no longer a slave to sin, we can overstate the case if we imply that there’s no longer any struggle, because the reality is, as long as you are a human being on this side of heaven, and before Jesus comes back and before you are glorified and made perfect in every way, you’re still going to have battles to face. You’re still going to have to fight those impulses of the flesh, those impulses of sin that still dwells within you—you’re going to have to do something, because you’re going to be tempted. Sometimes you’re going to blow it, sometimes you’re going to fail. You’re going to fail with anger, or you’re going to fail with lust, or you’re going to fail with pride. You’re going to do things that you hate, but you find yourself doing it anyway. We all know that experience; it’s this conflict with indwelling sin.
So the division of the self is something that we all face, that we all experience, and this means (here’s some application for this first point) that we need to understand that our desires in and of themselves do not define our identity. You need to know that. This may be the most important point to make, especially if you’re a teenager, college student, or young person in the room. The culture is telling you that you are whatever you desire most deeply. Whatever it is that you really want to be, that’s who you are.
I think it’s much more realistic to say that, in reality, you’re going to find many conflicting desires in your heart and your life, and some of those desires are going to be good, and some of those desires are not going to be good, and you can’t just follow your heart. You can’t just follow your heart! If you follow your heart wherever it leads, you’re going to end up on a path of destruction. You can’t do that. You have to, instead, identify the desires that align with what is good instead of the desires that align with what is evil and destructive, and you choose the good over the evil. You are not your desires; your desires do not define your identity.
You also need to know (here’s the second application point) that your heart is a battleground between good and evil. Your desires are in conflict. The good versus the bad—the good that you want to do versus the evil that you are tempted to do.
This shows our great need for redemption, doesn’t it? It shows our great need for God’s grace to bring freedom and renewal and redemption into our lives, because we are at war, and that war is being fought on the battleground of our hearts. The division of ourselves.
2. The Reason for This Division
Now, why does this division exist? That’s the second thing—the reason for this division. I think the basic reason for the division is the conflict between the sin within us and the law of God, which is good; the goodness of God’s law versus the sin within us. You see it in verse 14: “For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin.”
In fact, when you dial this in to Paul’s broader argument in Romans, what he’s doing here is dealing with the question of the law, because in the book of Romans he’s made some pretty outrageous statements about the law. He has said that the law actually served to increase sin—it makes it worse. It has an effect on sin that makes sin worse. You know how this is. If you’re a parent, you know this. As soon as you make a rule and create a boundary and you tell your children, “Don’t do this,” it just makes them want to do it, right? That’s kind of how the law works. The law can show you what is good, but because of the sinfulness of the human heart it actually arouses what is evil and it makes you want to rebel and transgress that law.
That raises a problem for Paul, and the problem is this: does that mean that the law therefore is bad instead of good? He argues very strongly in this chapter that no, the law is good, and the law shows us what is good.
You can see this in verse 12. I didn’t read this earlier, but this is an important statement about the law. He says that “the law is holy and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.”
One of the things that you need to know here is that the Bible in general and Paul in particular strongly affirms the objectivity of goodness, of moral goodness, the objectivity of moral right and wrong—moral absolutes. The law is what gives that definition. The law clarifies what is objectively good. The law is holy, the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
Then, when you look at Paul’s conflict of desires, when you remember what he said about the law it helps you understand what the good is that he wants. In verse 18, “For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out.” What is it that he wants to do that’s right? It’s the law, which is right or righteous.
In verse 19, “For I do not do the good I want . . . .” What is that good? It is the commandment which is holy and just and good.
So he’s saying, “I recognize the objective goodness of the law of God, but I find that I am not able to carry that law out.”
I think it’s important for us to recognize that the Bible very clearly teaches these moral absolutes, that there is objective right and wrong, there is good and evil, these things exist. You know, I think even non-believers can see this. Though we live in a culture that is awash with moral relativism, you push a little bit on it, and I think people know that there are things that are wrong.
One of the things that C.S. Lewis pointed out in his wonderful book The Abolition of Man (it’s in the appendix), he draws together the moral codes, the moral laws of all these different cultures. I don’t even remember what all the cultures were, but probably five or six different ancient cultures, not all of them Christian, but he shows that all of these cultures invariably forbid things like murder and stealing and lying and adultery. You know why? You know why all countries pretty much forbid this today? Because it is the objective law of God. It’s natural law, and it’s stamped on our hearts. We know that there’s right and wrong. We know that.
So the law is good, and the law given by God can show us what is good. But here’s the problem: the law is not only good, it’s also weak. Paul actually says that. He talks about the law “weakened by the flesh” in Romans 8. The law is weak. It can show us what is good, but it can’t make us good.
That’s the basic problem, isn’t it? The law can show us what is good, but the law cannot make us good. That’s why this conflict can be so deeply distressing in our hearts and lives. In fact, this is what it feels like. You can see three aspects of the resulting experience of someone who’s living within this conflict:
(1) There’s struggle in the heart. You see it in verses 22-23, “For I delight in the law of God in my inner being, but I see in my members another law, waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.” This is true even in the life of the believer. In 1 Peter 2:11, Peter, very clearly addressing believers, says, “Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from the passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul.”
Once again, your heart is a battleground; you are at war. Not with another human being; you are at war with yourself. You are at war with something in your heart and your life—the passions of the flesh that wage war against your soul struggle in our hearts.
(2) But that struggle leads to a second thing, and that’s grief over our condition. You see this in verse 24, where Paul says, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?”
What does that word “wretched” mean? It means miserable. This is a good diagnostic test of whether you are a genuine Christian or not. If you are a Christian, when you sin, it’s going to make you miserable. I would never go so far as to say that a Christian is not going to sin. Christians sin. You still sin, I still sin, we all still sin; let’s just acknowledge it; we are sinners. We still sin, even as people who are redeemed, even as people who are trying to put sin to death, even as people who are no longer under the dominion of sin, so that sin is not the primary reigning power in our lives. But we still struggle with sin, and sometimes we blow it. Sometimes we lose the battle and we sin.
Here’s the deal: if you’re a Christian, when you do that, it’s going to make you miserable. You are not going to be happy in your sin; instead, you’re going to cry out like Paul, “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me?” There’s this longing for deliverance, and that’s the third part of this experience.
(3) There’s struggle in the heart, there is grief over our condition, and there is a longing for deliverance. We say, “Who will deliver me from this body of death?” And then Paul gives us the answer in verse 25: “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”
3. The Freedom the Gospel Brings
That leads to point number three, the freedom that the gospel brings.
We can recognize that we all experience this division of the self. The reason for this division is because of the conflict between the sin within us and the goodness of what God’s law requires, the objective good that we know we should be living according to, and yet we don’t. So that prompts this longing for deliverance and for freedom, and you see that freedom promised from verse 25 down into Romans 8.
I just read the first part of verse 25, “Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” Look then at verses 1-2 of chapter 8. He says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life has set you free [there’s the freedom!] in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.”
I would suggest to you that that freedom is a threefold freedom. It is freedom from the guilt of sin, freedom from the power of sin, and eventually, someday, freedom from the presence of sin.
(1) There is, first of all, freedom from the guilt of sin, freedom from condemnation. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”
Do you know what that means? It means that if you are in Christ, even though you have sinned, God does not condemn you for those sins. You’re free from the condemnation. Why? Because the penalty has been paid, the debt’s been paid. Jesus has already paid for those sins, and you are free from that guilt, you are free from that condemnation.
I love the words of the old hymn writer Augustus Toplady. He said,
The terrors of law and of God
With me can have nothing to do;
My Savior’s obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.
That’s the heart of the gospel. That’s justification. It means that since you are united to Christ by faith, Jesus has paid for your sins, and Jesus’ obedience, his righteousness, his, his goodness, his holiness—all of that is credited to you.
To put it simply, God treated Jesus as if Jesus had lived your life, as if he’d lived my life, so that now he can treat us as if we’d lived the perfect, obedient life of Jesus Christ. We’re free from condemnation, free from the guilt of sin. That’s the first part of freedom.
(2) But Paul says more in verse 2. He says, “For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death.” What is the law of sin and death? Again, the commentators debate this, but I’ll just cut to the chase. I think the law of sin and death is the law itself, the Mosaic law, the moral law, which is corrupted by sin and then leads to death. I think that’s what he’s talking about.
I think what Paul is saying in the book of Romans is that we are free from that law. We are no longer under that law; instead, we are under grace. Rather than the law governing our lives, it shows us what we should do, but it’s not able to heal us, it’s not able to change us, it’s not able to deliver us. Instead of the law, we’re given something better in Christ. We are given the Holy Spirit.
In fact, look at how this argument continues. Let me read verses 1-4. I just want you to follow the logic here.
“There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. For the law of the Spirit of life has set you free in Christ Jesus from the law of sin and death. For God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do. By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin he condemned sin in the flesh [now notice this], in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”
I think what Paul is saying there is that the Spirit brings us a new kind of freedom that the law could never bring.
The best illustration of this I know is from John Bunyan’s wonderful allegory The Pilgrim’s Progress. Some of you have heard me share this before if you’ve been here for a while. There’s a place in The Pilgrim’s Progress where Christian comes to this house, and it’s called the Interpreter’s house. The interpreter takes him around the house and shows him many different rooms, and one of those rooms is a parlor that is filled with dust. A man comes into the parlor with a broom, trying to sweep the room out, but really all he does is stir up the dust so it becomes more and more dusty. The dirt is in the air and Christian is choking on the dust. So this man’s not able to clean the room.
Then a young woman comes into the room, and she comes with a pail of water, and she begins to sprinkle the room with water. She’s getting moisture into the air, and then she’s able to actually clean the room.
When Christian asks the interpreter, “What does this mean?” this is essentially what the interpreter says. He says the room, the parlor, represents the human heart, and the dust in the room is sin, original sin, corruption that is in the human heart. The man with the broom is the law, who comes in to try to clean the room, but he’s not able. All he does is stir it up, worse and worse. But the young woman who comes in the room is the gospel, the grace of the gospel, and she comes and she cleanses the room. She sprinkles the grace of the gospel in the room, and then she’s able to cleanse the room.
That’s the difference. The law can show you what is good, but it can’t make you good. But the Spirit comes, and the Spirit actually changes you. He changes you from the inside out, so that your heart is cleansed. God’s grace comes. He actually changes you so that you actually can begin to love the good and do the good, pursue the good, and actually begin to fulfill the law.
St. Augustine put it like this; he said, “Law was given that grace might be sought; grace was given that the law might be fulfilled.”
(3) So we are free from the condemnation, the guilt of sin; we are free from the power of sin, as the power of the Spirit comes and brings freedom and transformation into our; and ultimately we will be free from the very presence of sin. We’ll be free from death itself and from all of the corrupting, ongoing influence of sin in our lives. That comes in glorification, when Jesus comes again and we see him as he is, we are made like him as we see him as he is, and we are completely and utterly changed. That’s our destiny, and that’s the identity that we are living into. It’s the new creation that we are in Christ.
Listen to how C.S. Lewis described this in Mere Christianity. He said, “He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a dazzling, radiant, and moral culture, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine; a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly, though of course on a smaller scale, his own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long, and in parts very painful, but that is what we are in for, nothing less.”
Now, what does that then mean for the way we think about identity? Let me end by giving you three things. This is how to apply the gospel to identity, the gospel that gives us freedom through Christ, his work on the cross, and through the transforming power and ministry of the Holy Spirit. Three things.
(1) Number one, you need to know that your identity is not determined by your sins or your law-keeping. Your identity is not determined by your past. Grace covers your sins, right? There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. Christ has kept the law in your place! You have a perfect record, not because you earned it but because Christ earned it and he gave it to you. That’s the gospel. That’s the heart of the gospel.
That means your identity is not determined by what you’ve done, but by what Christ has done. Your identity is not determined by your sins or by your law-keeping, but by what Christ has done.
(2) Number two, your identity is not determined by your inner feelings and desires. I’ve said it several times; let me say it again this morning. Until we are perfectly glorified when Jesus returns, our bodies are still subject to sin and death, and we are still living in a war zone. Our hearts are still battlegrounds, and that means you are going to desire things you should not desire. But those desires do not define you, they do not determine who you are. Don’t let them. Instead, do what Paul tells us to do: put them to death, resist them, and in the power of the Spirit live in accord with who you really are.
(3) Number three, your identity is determined by your union with Christ and the gift of his indwelling Spirit. As we’ve seen in this series, if you are in Christ, if you are united to Christ, it means you are chosen. You are adopted. You are redeemed. You are forgiven. You are an heir of God and a joint heir with Jesus Christ. You’re in the family! You are loved by your heavenly Father, and you belong to him. That’s who you are. You’re someone who belongs to God through Jesus Christ. Live according to your new identity in Christ. Let the gospel bring that renewal, that freedom, that transformation into the division in your heart, as you still wrestle with it, and live by the power of the Spirit in the freedom that Christ came to bring. Let’s pray.
Father, we thank you this morning for your word and we thank you for the glorious promises of the gospel, that there is freedom in Christ, freedom from the guilt and condemnation of sin right now available to anyone and everyone who will confess their sins and trust in your forgiving grace given through Christ. If we confess our sins, you are faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ. So thank you for that freedom.
Thank you that we are free from the power of sin, because we live not under the law, but we live under grace because of your Spirit’s work in us. Thank you for the hope of ultimate and final freedom, when Christ comes again and our bodies are transformed, when we are rid of sin and all of the sinful desires that remain within us because of our sinful flesh. We’re rid of that once and for all, our bodies are transformed, and we are made new. Lord, we long for that day.
We thank you for this freedom. We pray that you would help us to live in light of it. As we come to the Lord’s table this morning, may it be for us a tangible reminder of the gospel. We’ve heard the gospel through your word; now may we see the gospel as we come to the table, as we sing, and as we handle the emblems of our Lord’s body and blood. We ask you to draw near to us in these moments and be glorified in us, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
Brian G. Hedges
