Who will deliver me from this body of death?

Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! (Rom 7:24-25)

Who among us, if we are honest, has not asked this question? Who among us, if we are honest, has not at some point looked at our lives and asked along with Job "Who will say to him, ‘What are you doing?’" Who among us, if we are honest, has not wanted to simply quit, start over or simply walk away?

If you think about it, that is the dilemma facing Paul in Romans 7. It is also the dilemma that faced Job. Even Nicodemus in John 3 is probing this question. There's a sense of this in what the author of Hebrews is addressing and also the churches that received the book of Revelation were facing this issue. Friends, when these aches arise in our hearts, we are not alone.

We do need a dose of reality as we face these times in our lives. One reality that we can't escape, but often try to anyway, is the fact that we are all physically dying. If you are reading this and are on the "upward slope" of "the hill", you may agree intellectually, but may not appreciate the pervasiveness of this reality. If you are "over the hill", you are beginning to grasp that your body is a finite machine that is wearing out. And for all of us, we are one accident, one illness, one phone call away from having this reality smashed into our face. Do I say this to depress? No, but to remind us all that physically we are all living in a body of death.

There is another reality that we need to keep in our minds. It is the fact that we are all in spiritual jungle. This picture is too nuanced to fully paint today, but the image we should all have in our minds is that while God has given us a clearing in the jungle by grace through the death of Jesus, the jungle keeps encroaching. We, by the power of the Spirit whack at the vines and insects, the snakes and the underbrush, but if we pause or get distracted, the jungle begins to over power us. And we feel ourselves drifting back to that body of death.

At this point, if we are honest, I think each of us can say with Paul "Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?" And while being at the end our ropes, or feeling like it, is not what we wish for or hope for or strive for, it is a place each of us has been (or will be some day). The question is how do we respond? Do we respond like Job's friends, with empty, pious religion? Do we respond like Nicodemus, probing but not grasping the simplicity of the answer. Do we respond like Job who sensed God was in the midst of everything yet needed Him to prove himself or at least explain what was going on? Or, do we respond like Paul and say this may be a struggle and this may be a fight, but thanks be to God because there is now no condemnation for those who are in Jesus Christ?

You see what Job's friends and Nicodemus missed, what Job himself didn't see until God revealed himself but what Paul understood is that what we have here is not the end. Our physical bodies will fail and die. Our spiritual battles will require effort and strength and training and blood, sweat and tears. And we will lose some of those battles. But the decisive battle has already been won. There is a mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus. Who will rescue me from this body of death? Jesus will!

So as we move forward, our hope is not in physical deliverance and protection, even though God may graciously give us both. Our hope is not in spiritual victory, although we strive, in the Spirit's power to grow up into Christ. Our hope is that Jesus died to deliver a people to himself. And that the Triune God had a plan from beginning to end to rescue and protect his sheep and present them faultless before his throne  And that one day, every tear will be dried, every tongue will praise God and the Lamb, every sin will be vanquished and we will receive a body of life. And we will walk with God.

I now send forth this post with a deep sense of its many defects; but with an earnest prayer that it may do some good. (JC Ryle)

To God Alone be the Glory