"Who will deliver me from this body of death?" Romans 7:24. NKJV
Some ancient kings tormented their prisoners by shackling them to decomposing corpses. This was mostly the one's who had murdered people, but not always. Paul longed to be free from the wretched body of death clinging to him, not that he had directly murdered anyone himself.
Spurgeon said:
"It was the custom of ancient tyrants, when they wished to put men to the most fearful punishments, to tie a dead body to them; placing the two back to back; and there was the living man, with a dead body closely strapped to him, rotting, putrid, corrupting, and this he must drag with him wherever he went."
As I've mentioned, this was usually the body of the murdered victim who was strapped to the murderer. Eventually, poisonous bacteria would penetrate the perpetrator's back as decomposition kicked in, leading him to an awfully, painful death.
The Apostle Paul struggled with the fact that the law could not take away his sin. Daily, he felt frustrated that he was committing sin when he didn't wish to. Does this sound normal to you? Many times during the day, we are tempted to sin. Sometimes we don't really recognise that we're doing it; but then again, at other times we do. What about our thought life? What about the times when we allow lust to take over our thinking and for a time, we do nothing to stop this? Paul had similar struggles. We don't know what they were, but he was human just like we are so must have felt similar impulses.
Most of us struggle with things in our past. Some may have been abused by someone that they had felt safe with initially. Some may have become involved with gangs, drug addiction, alcoholism, theft just to name a few. We all have a past but the great thing about belonging to Jesus is that, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. ( 1 John 1:9 ) The main scripture above is dealing with the past. The only way the perpetrator would be free from the dead body on his back, would have been to shrug it off and bury it. It is the same with us.
Many of us struggle with past issues when we really shouldn't if Jesus has set us free from them. However, sometimes, we have to decide to cast the burden off us and bury it. So the past you're carrying around is weighing you down and preventing you from moving forward in victory. It is time that you cast it off, bury it and move to your new life. It really is the only way!
Copyright 2019 Grahame Howard
dailylifewithjesus@protonmail.com
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