Meeting Report Dec 3, 2006:

We were thankful to have the Hamilton family with us Sunday evening at the discipleship class. We were also very encouraged by the uplifting singing in the service, including special group singing. Bro Dale brought a teaching lesson on the transformation from Saul to Paul, an especially gifted apostle in the New Testament. His focus was on Romans, Chapter 7.

The commandments of God were once written on scrolls and stored away.  This law was supposed to keep God’s people in line and let them know how their actions related them to God.  But many times, they weren’t aware that they were breaking a command because they didn’t know them.  When Jesus came and died, he abolished the old religious system of written commands.  Now he writes his laws on our hearts or impresses on our conscience what is right or wrong.  And when we violate them, His Spirit pricks our conscience.   

In Romans 7:1-4, Paul describes this process of the old law passing away and a new one put in place by comparing it to a woman who remarries after her first husband dies.   He then goes on in the following verses to compare and contrast, not the old law vs. the new, but the old sinful life versus a new life in Christ. 

When someone starts down a path of sin, eventually they will be controlled so strongly by their sinful appetites that it supersedes their free will – their resistance or ability to say NO.  They will start doing things they never expected to do and find they can’t control their actions.  By this time, they might realize they need to change and do right, but they are in bondage to sin.  Paul, or more accurately “Saul”, got into this state for he says in v18 “for to will is present with me (I want to do right) but how to perform that which is good I find not (but I don’t know how.  I can’t).”  Continuing in v19-20, he states “I can’t even do what I want to do because I now am controlled by these sinful habits”.  Anyone who has suffered with an addiction of any kind (whether alcohol, drugs, sexual immorality, food, etc.) can relate to this verse.  You cannot seem to break the habit.  What a wretched, deplorable state to be in.  “O wretched man that I am.  Who shall deliver me…?”  Thank God even ones who have gone this far can find deliverance just like Paul did, through Jesus Christ. 

Jesus Christ will give us a new life.  We will be alive in Him.  Every Christian has room to grow in their walk with God, but a true Christian will never rebel against something God has spoken to them.  In verse 9, Paul explains this – “I was alive without the law once: but when the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.”  In other words, if I am doing something and don’t know God forbids it, I am innocent before Him.  But when it is shown to me that I am violating one of God’s moral principles and I choose to continue, my actions become rebellion (or sin) and my relationship with God is severed.  We all must choose to keep our relationship alive with Christ daily, or we will end up in the same condition that He once delivered us from. 

Sin will take you farther than you want to go,
Slowly but boldly taking control.
Sin will keep you longer than you want to stay.
Sin will cost you more than you want to pay.