Romans 7:25 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.
Paul gives the answer to his question of verse 24 and it is that God through Jesus Christ saves sinners from their body of death. This is grace and the true way to salvation rather than attempting to achieve salvation through the law. Paul states that he himself [before grace] served the law with his mind but with his flesh he served the law of sin. He was captive to sin and unable to obey the law of God. To believe that post-conversion Paul has been talking about his struggle with indwelling sin in verses 7-25 you have got to believe he has contradicted what he said in verse 6 when he said, “we serve in the new way of the Spirit and not in the old way of the written code.” How could he state that we serve in the new way of the spirit and not in the old way of the written code in verse 6 and then state he [after his conversion] still served the law of God with his mind in verse 25? He couldn’t, wouldn’t, and didn’t because verse 25 is referring to pre-conversion Paul. Post-conversion Paul clearly ruled out serving God through the law in verse 6 and his entire Epistle to the Galatians. In the next verse, Rom. 8:1, Paul begins to lay out the results of being in Jesus Christ through faith and goes on to describe the new way of serving in the Spirit.
Focus on Christ #86
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Walking in the Spirit - some will caracature what you are about to unfold here to claim that
Lord-shippers teach perfectionism. However walking in the Spirit also encompases confessing sin when it is committed, as David did in Psalm's 32 and 51. See also 1 John 1:9.
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