Thanks be to God-through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself in my mind am a slave to God’s law, but in the sinful nature a slave to the law of sin. Romans 7: 25, NIV (Emphasis provided).
Gracious God, today we want to ask You to show us how to completely surrender all our thoughts, and all our desires, and all our actions, to Your Holy Spirit. So at this hour we will sit at Your feet and listen to Your voice. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.
Today we are going to deal with the portion of our verse that is emphasized, “in my mind [I] am a slave to God’s law.” If it were not for the grace of God, all of us would be a slave to the Adversary. But thanks be to God, we can turn away from sin, and choose, instead, to serve God! I invite you to go with me to Romans 6. We have seen this before, but to illustrate the point, I am trying to make let us look at it again. “But now that you have been set free from sin and have become slaves to God, the benefit you reap leads to holiness, and the result is eternal life” (Romans 6; 22)
The mind that once was under the lordship of the prince of darkness, has now been set free, by the Omnipotent Savior, who came and overpowered the “strongman” who held us in captivity. Now, in gratitude and love, we choose to become slaves of righteousness! Therefore, it is of the utmost importance that we guard well the entrance to our minds, because it is with the mind that we decide whose slave we will be! It is with the mind that we choose what to read, what to look at, what to listen to. And all of these choices will either strengthen, or weaken, my mind’s ability to resist evil!
I am almost certain that you have heard the saying, “We are what we eat.” What this really means, is that we will be as healthy, or as sickly, as the food we eat, to a great degree! Of course there are exceptions to every rule. But the saying summarizes the rule: we are a reflection of our diet. Now let us apply this to the mind. Our text talks about two kinds of slavery. In the Christian’s mind, he or she is a slave to the “law of God. The other half of the text talks about the flesh, (our fallen nature) as being a slave to the law of sin (those sinful desires, the “lust of the eyes”).
Every person has to decide which of these two natures are going to gain the victory. Whichever of the two natures we feed, will become strong, and eventually overcome the other! But what is of greatest interest, is the fact that we feed both natures through the mind! Each day we decide what we will, or will not, look at. Each day we decide what we will, or will not, listen to. Each day we decide what we will, or will not read. The other side of the coin is that every day we decide if we will, or will not, pray to God. Every day we decide whether we will, or will not study God’s word. Every day we decide if we will, or will not spend time alone with God; getting to know Him better!
Every day, by our choices, we are feeding one nature, and starving, the other. One day, one of these natures will reveal whose slave we are by taking full control of our minds. This could be a matter of life or death!
Tomorrow we will see why this is so important.